Editing Software patent debate (section)

===Trivial patents===
*Anecdotal evidence suggests that some software patents cover either trivial inventions or inventions that would have been obvious to persons of ordinary skill in the art at the time the invention was made.<ref>James Bessen & Michael J. Meurer "Patent Failure: How Judges, Bureaucrats, and Lawyers Put Innovators at Risk" Princeton University Press, 2008, {{ISBN|978-0-691-13491-8}}: "(...) many people have focused solely on patent examination quality as the objective of reform, based largely on anecdotal evidence of trivial, obvious, or otherwise invalid patents. Although we support efforts to improve patent examination quality (large numbers of questionable patents create conditions in which poor patent notice is unavoidable), our analysis suggests that this is only part of the problem and the patent system cannot likely be fixed by addressing only this issue. Of course, the notice problems that we find central to the poor performance of the patent system are not the only ones looking for a remedy. We argue, however, that many proposed reforms, including reforms directed toward improving patent examination quality, are unlikely to be effective unless patent notice is improved generally".</ref>
*Patent examiners rarely have a comprehensive knowledge of the specific technologies disclosed in the patent applications they examine. This is in large part due to the enormous number of micro-niches in the software field and the very limited number of hours (often less than 8 h per patent) available to examiners to review patent applications. So, patents are sometimes allowed on inventions that appear to be trivial extensions of existing technologies.<ref>James Bessen & Michael J. Meurer "Patent Failure: How Judges, Bureaucrats, and Lawyers Put Innovators at Risk" Princeton University Press, 2008, {{ISBN|978-0-691-13491-8}}: "It is possible, however, that features of software technology make it particularly susceptible to the patenting of obvious ideas, especially given the legal doctrines of non-obviousness developed by the Federal Circuit. For one thing, the general-purpose nature of software technology—again, because the technology is abstract, similar techniques can be used in a wide range of applications— makes it inevitable that techniques known in one realm might be applied in another, yet the documentary evidence that the Federal Circuit requires for a demonstration of obviousness might not be published."</ref>