[RankingMember]

This is perhaps one aspect of government that could use an additional layer of bureaucracy. The patent application process needs an initial high-level review step to quash silliness like this before it gets through to the queue for nitty-gritty time-consuming review, which has been proven to repeatedly miss the forest for the trees.

[mannykannot]

Part of the problem is that, thanks partly to precedents from earlier decisions, 'obvious' and 'prior art' have taken on special meanings that do not conform to either common usage or common sense.