1) Hindsight is a powerful effect. Once you've been shown something new, a person of skill may instantly deduce how it works. This does not necessarily mean it was obvious in retrospect.
Assuming I ever even saw the patented implementation. Chances are almost nonexistent that the patented work was what inspired me as a (hypothetical) implementer of podcast skipping functionality.
This presents a significant problem for any system that purports to reward innovation.
If an idea is so obvious that nearly everyone faced with a similar problem stumbles on a similar solution, it's not worthy of a "reward," much less a 20-year monopoly. It can only be economically destructive to award such monopolies.
> If an idea is so obvious that nearly everyone faced with a similar problem stumbles on a similar solution...
And there in lie more issues with obviousness: it may be obvious if presented a similar problem. Many scientists, mathematicians and engineers will tell you that the biggest step to solving a problem is to state it the "right" way. But once you do that, the solution becomes obvious! In that case, the issue is, was the problem obvious in the first place?
Fortunately, patent systems have a provision for this. In the US it's called the Teaching/Suggestion/Motivation (TSM) test: roughly, if any reference identifies a problem that would motivate someone to solve it in a particular way, it counts towards obviousness. Note that TSM is not the only criteria these days.
As a well known example, think about the iPhone. In hindsight everything it does seems obvious. But the problem, as. But the problem, as Jobs restated it, was "current phone interfaces suck, touchscreens are better, how do we make it awesome?" I don't think anybody was looking at that smartphones in that light. Yes, there were tons of touchscreen phones but they all sucked. If you look at Apple's patents, each one looks trivial now, but taken together, there's no denying that the iPhone when it came out blew everyone's minds.
> It can only be economically destructive to award such monopolies.
There is insufficient empirical evidence for this thesis. Interestingly, the same goes for the opposite thesis, that our patent systems are economically beneficial.
Everyone agrees that the bar should be higher, though. Nobody knows how to set it higher, unfortunately
Assuming I ever even saw the patented implementation. Chances are almost nonexistent that the patented work was what inspired me as a (hypothetical) implementer of podcast skipping functionality.
This presents a significant problem for any system that purports to reward innovation.
If an idea is so obvious that nearly everyone faced with a similar problem stumbles on a similar solution, it's not worthy of a "reward," much less a 20-year monopoly. It can only be economically destructive to award such monopolies.