The "sloppiness" as you call it is inherent to patents. There is no objective test for obviousness or novelty. Heck, the very idea that something could be "non-obvious" is absurd. Every idea is obvious once all of the other ideas pointing to it are known. This is how knowledge works. Patents attempt to codify this by cataloguing the entire structure of all human invention into an enormous database of "prior art", all for the purpose of determining whether or not somebody has the exclusive right to collect economic rents for a few years. This is ludicrous!