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 pre

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).