I don't know why patents even exist at this point. I have seen many times an obvious thing has been patented, where anyone sane wouldn't think of patenting some

I don't know why patents even exist at this point. I have seen many times an obvious thing has been patented, where anyone sane wouldn't think of patenting something like that. Most likely this is to get a PR e.g. "we are using patented technology", but if you worked on a software and then you learn someone has patented something that your software does years later, makes you feel uneasy and there is no defence against that. One thing if companies are doing that for PR, but if "their IP" gets taken over by patent trolls...