The thing about a lot of inventions is that they do sometimes look "trivial" after the fact; in other words, things look really simple once its been done! Most

The thing about a lot of inventions is that they do sometimes look "trivial" after the fact; in other words, things look really simple once its been done! Most inventions (and patents reflect this) are actually small improvements to certain parts of other inventions, which improve the system in such a manner as to be considered a patentable item of their own. As such, they tend to be small things, which when you look at them after the fact, seem to be obvious. Maybe they were - but only to a particular person, who may also be somewhat versed in the art, and also willing to spend the money and time doing the "invention", who also doesn't think (or is aware) that nobody else has done the invention before (often, sometimes you might see something, and go "hey - this could be improved if they did this" - then think "but somebody has probably already done it, it is so simple" - and you never follow up - which if you had, you would have found that nobody did! Because they all thought the same thing!). We see this often in software (also, there is the correlating idea of software that - after it is made and is popular - seemed too stupid for it to succeed before it did - Twitter, anyone?) - that there is a need for something, but everything thinks that either it has already been done, or that a new version wouldn't be substantially different or better than what is already out there - and so it doesn't get developed. ...Until someone does develop it - then we look at it, and smack our foreheads thinking "It is so obvious!" or "It is so simple!" or "I thought of that years ago!" Maybe you did, or maybe it is - but you weren't the guy who followed up on it (or in many cases, you might actually follow up on it - but the market doesn't care or want it at that point - only to find that a decade or more later, that's when the market wants it - and someone else does it, while you aren't looking).