If you are looking for answers as to how some of the ridiculous patents manage to get through the patent office (including patents for software concepts that engineers are likely to consider "obvious" or for which there is likely "prior art"), you are unlikely to find the answers here.
Whenever someone defends software patents, I bring up Amazon's one-click patent. It's so obvious! I use the one-click-checkout feature on Amazon all the time and dearly miss it on every other website out there. Imagine if Pizza Delivery sites or Flower Delivery sites had that feature. People would order things a lot more if they didn't have to go through extra screens to confirm things every single time. The funnel gets smaller as the number of steps rise. And now one company has a patent on short funnels.
For instance, this question from your linked thread: http://www.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/ww982/iama_patent_e... was answered satisfactory. There is a difference between
"a plurality of heuristic modules, wherein: each heuristic module corresponds to a respective area of search and employs a different, predetermined heuristic algorithm"
and
"searching different sources of data wherein you search each with a method that makes sense for its contents"
But the replies from random commenters and vote totals would have you believe the opposite.
To me (and I know I'm simplifying just like the random commenters you speak of), the patent is _intended_ to cover 1. performing heuristic searches on multiple areas (modules) 2. using a different search on each area
However, it uses the word "predetermined" when defining the heuristic algorithm to use for each area. If my code randomly picks between two slightly different heuristics (even with a very low probability), would it still be covered under the patent?
Also it says "heuristic algorithm" meaning singular algorithm. If I ran 2 algorithms in parallel (even one that always returns no results) and then chose the "better" of the two, would that get around the patent too?
Are patents vulnerable to this sort of work-around due to subtle interpretations of wording, or is it really the intent of the patent that matters?
[0]: https://twitter.com/id_aa_carmack/status/137189212519792640
It seem every last adjective counts.
"In order to jump to an obvious argument, you'd have to prove this device reads on all the limitations minus the unlock image that is slid. Then you'd have to show something else that uses an image to unlock something. Then you'd have to provide rationale why the combination between the two things would have been obvious at the time of the invention, in this case 2005."
In other words, obviousness might seem, uh obvious as a defense for most this stuff. But actuality it's categorically dismissed with the "you can't prove it" argument. Plus the "but was it obvious in 2005, with phone!" (lovely to see those so-and-so's trying to wiggle out of that one but essentially coming back to it).
What I believe the commenters were getting at is that those aren't very meaningful limitations. One of the most straightforward implementations of a system where a user can search multiple orthogonal sources of information would be to define separate algorithms in a pluggable modular form. I also imagine most search algorithms could be described as having heuristic components, probably especially those tailored for a particular type of information.
I don't think this qualifies as one-click.
According to them this "presumption of patentability" (as I would call it) was a policy change that happened not very long ago, as before the policy was to reject as many patents as possible.
I would also make a wild guess: That this change was lobbied for by the IP law firms, because they are the only ones which really benefit from it.