The explanation for the ridiculous patents

Check out the Excrement Patents tag. There are lots more such patent applications. I guess it is extra money for the PTO to waste. Now, you are thinking, what is the harm that people file such silliness, such silliness will never issue?" Oh, you poor, naive fools: GENERAL CONCEPT: scan incoming documents into a relational database, identifying relevant fields AS TRIVIAL A CONCEPT AS IT GETS SLIGHTLY MORE SPECIFIC CONCEPT: scan incoming documents with printed dates and form identifications, and load date/form data into appropriate fields of relational database AS TRIVIAL A CONCEPT AS IT GETS SLIGHTLY MORE SPECIFIC CONCEPT: scan incoming PTO Office Actions with dates and document types ("notice of allowance", "missing documents") and load into the relational database inside a docketing system.