[fspeech]

The key here is that patents are supposed to be non obvious to those "skilled in the arts" and herein lies the rub: who are those skllled in the arts? In my previous career (wireless and IC) I saw most patents as trivial for someone skilled in the arts: they were mostly byproducts of routine engineering design work. They were novel only in the sense that you are probably the first to work on a specific form. Yet they could appear rather deep and profound to the untrained eyes as you need a lot of training to be skilled in the arts in the first place. Can patent examiners truly judge the novelty of these patent applications?

And the funny thing is: if you come up with some real algorithm for some real hard problem it is unlikely that your algorithm can be protected by a patent, certainly not in its general form. The true algorithmic nature of your solution is likely too abstract and mathematical for a patent as patents do not protect laws of nature (physics and math qualify as laws of nature).