Because the perceived quality of patent awards has deteriorated--critics complain that they were given almost indiscriminately to dot-coms for only the slightest changes in prior art--even minor patent applications must be carefully (and expensively) vetted by patent lawyers as protection against lawsuits by aggrieved patent holders.
Marked by a patently obvious blue button, the new addition serves up relevant priorart results by using key phrases from a patent's text and putting them together in a search query.
Eventually the patent database becomes rich enough with priorart to reach an equilibrium, but the errors in the interim produce a batch of legacy patents that never should have issued.
And if a firm outsources the entire patent-filing activity, it also leaves this identification and interpretation of priorart to the external solicitors.