Patents protect how a problem is solved not what is being solved.
Several valid patents can be directed at the same exact problem as long as they solve it using different techniques.
Several valid patents can be directed at the same exact problem as long as they solve it using different techniques.
Take as an example the "Drinking Bird." Imagine the inventor has applied for a patent. You get some materials engineers and a physicist or something in a room, describe a device which resembles a bird and continuously sips water, and ask them to devise a way to build it in a few hours. If they describe a bulb full of dichloromethane with a tube leading up to a beak, then it's not patentable.
That seems pretty specific ... what would be an analogous software scenario?
Programmers/UX designers brainstorming session includes several ideas, including this one: What if we remembered customer addresses and credit card info and just had a single button that said "buy"?
Patent denied.
Proving non-obviousness is well trod ground in litigation and in patent examinations. It is often the hardest criteria to get over.
Though typically obviousness can be proven by finding two or more printed publications that in combination disclose the claimed invention.
In this example, the novelty in the claim at issue is related to using a transfer criteria that is a subject identification of the image...wherein the subject identification is based on a topic, theme or individual shown in the image. This was added as the final amendment to get the patent over the prior art the examiner cited.
If one can find evidence in [edit: one or more] printed publications that this was going on before 8/8/2008, the patent can be invalidated easily. Otherwise, it will be a slog of litigation.