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Does anyone think there are viable/profitable business ideas in there? If the original inventors didn't bother to build something out of it, I wonder if it's because the patents themselves are "good thought experiments" or if the inventors lacked the business wherewithal to make it happen.

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Most definitely. In my experience ideas are rarely valuable by themselves. Rather an idea is valuable when implemented by someone who have what it takes to see it through.

Simply put, not a lot of people have what it takes just because they filed a patent.

At least the ideas are put on record and able to be accessed by someone who could see it through once the patent has expired, which fortunately is a reasonable amount of time.

Sometimes the idea can be good, but the originator isn't capable of turning it into more. As just about any VC will tell you, the idea is just step 1.

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