I thought the same. It's interesting that this kind of comment gets downvoted without explanation. Is there some kind of culture on HN that implicitly forbids us to voice criticism?
It's not constructive, at all. "When you think about it"? Well, I tought about it, and patents are useful for their stated purpose.
They seem trivial now, 20 some odd years after the fact.
I once wanted to build a system, and decided to browse through patents. I realized that my system would easily infringe 100+ of patents. Many of them were actually very recent.
Ok? That doesn't really disagree with my point.
What if my human body infringes a parent?
I think a convincing case could be made that the human body is prior art.