It's not just that technology advances; patents eventually expire. The problem is that the electronics industry advances an order of magnitude faster. A patent in the farm-tractor industry takes two years to start making money and is still non-obvious 25 years later. A patent in the handheld electronics or algorithms industry takes two weeks to start making money and can be obsolete 25 months later. It's still a giant clusterfuck, but it's close enough that it only needs a major reform.