If it's obvious in hindsight, it's still obvious. The trade is: we give you a monopoly on the thing, you give us (the public) written step-by-step instructions

If it's obvious in hindsight, it's still obvious. The trade is: we give you a monopoly on the thing, you give us (the public) written step-by-step instructions on how to create that thing. If instructions aren't necessary to create it — i.e. I can figure it out from just seeing it — then the deal is broken, and isn't serving public good any more. They're getting their monopoly, what did we get? Zilch. This is the problem with patent protection in our industry. We can recreate things pretty easily. In say, biotech, it's much harder to figure out. I'm still behind just scrapping patents altogether though. It's adding process for process' sake. The same feeling you get when you have big section of unnecessary code, and ripping it out has a no effect on the result — patents feel like that chunk of code, before you rip it out. They seem like another area where people have created work for themselves effectively doing or creating nothing. If we got rid of them, not a lot would change, but millions of people would instantly have less weight on their brain.