The US (and sometimes our) patent system is completely rubbish. Patents were all about helping the small business survive against big bad bullies. This got corrupt, and then King James (I think) scrapped the whole thing and started it all again, to encourage innovation and ensure that the small business could release their product and not have it ripped off within 5 minutes and loose out.
Nowadays people are just patenting the first things which come into their heads, Microsoft are a big culprit of this, but there are loads others.. It’s often through patenting software processes, stuff we just naturally do in software, which have been around for years.. These often sit about until someone with lots of money uses this obvious idea, and they get sued. (Microsoft patented a timed button for example, just click a button for a specific period of time and it has a different function, very innovative you think? It’s exactly how we turn on our washing machine, so why is this allowed?).
Prior art is what patent offices are supposed to spot and deny applications, but there’s so much patents flying through the offices that their obviously not even trying to verify claims.. Proof of this wings our way through this patent filed recently.. Looks boring? Should it have been granted? Maybe you don’t understand the processes defined, but look again at point 9. This obviously shouldn’t have been granted, because contextually this make no sense at all! If the patent office had read this they would clearly have raised it, the fact that it slipped through shows just how easy it is to put any old nonsense in a patent and get it approved.
Unfortunately, even if a patent is granted that shouldn’t have been, it takes a whole lot of lawyers and (expensive) legal processes to challenge it. This means for a nominal fee with the patent office you can make yourself look really innovative (buy, buy buy! Shares!!)… This is really a corrupt system, which will ultimately result in a big bubble bursting in the investment markets, just like the dot-com bubble, because people really have no substance, just a lot of ideas that aren’t even their ideas.
It’s time to put or money into canned food and shot-guns 
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