That’s definitely part of it: in the 90s you saw a ton of “on the internet” patents which looked a lot like the examiners not having had enough experience to sa

That’s definitely part of it: in the 90s you saw a ton of “on the internet” patents which looked a lot like the examiners not having had enough experience to say that something was either an obvious adaptation of an existing concept to the web or that the two systems had almost nothing in common other than using a computer (I remember a patent troll hitting a customer with a 1980s patent for cash registers connected to a minicomputer using a phone line, claiming it covered their web store). A younger generation of patent clerks hired with more experience seems to have helped there. The other problem is funding: look at the patent examiner listings right now and think about how many people they’re going to be able to get with the federal pay scale having been prevented from keeping pace with the market for years: https://www.usajobs.gov/Search/Results?l=&l=&a=CM56&hp=public&k=patent%20examiner&p=1 https://www.usajobs.gov/Search/Results?l=&l=&a=CM56&hp=publi...