And this was what tripped up my team for years as we tried to patent a process we used to control a machine. No matter how we tried to narrow the claims, the examiner was always able to find some obscure prior art somewhere that they could use to reject the application. Finally, after about 3 years of trying, our IP attorney suggested we drop it.

It was probably this more than anyone else that made me realize that Patent Examiners are really, really good at their jobs and not just rubber stamps, as the software community seems to think.