Am I evil, or is killing patents just plain fun?

I disagree.

a: If they are currently overrun with more work than they can handle, they can remedy this by refusing patents, thereby discouraging frivolous applications. Having done so, they can become a more efficient organisation.

b: Fees for continuations, amendments and extending response deadlines can be larger than the fee for simply issuing the patent.

c: As a Government entity, they have an interest in making as much money as possible change hands (and therefore attract tax). One way to do this is to occupy the applicants' lawyers with remedial work.

1. Patentable subject matter. The Supreme Court declared that algorithms are not patentable in Benson (1972) and Flook (1978). The Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (the patent court) reversed the Supreme Court rulings completely by 1994's Alappat decision. Since then, very, very few especially egregious patents are rejected on subject matter grounds.

2. Utility is usually trivial to prove. If you're using it, it has utility.

4. (unmentioned) Invalidity on the basis of obviousness is a dead letter under CAFC precedent. The Supreme Court attempted to revive it in 2007's KSR v. teleflex, but the CAFC has overruled the Supreme Court on 35 USC §103 (the obviousness law). You pretty much need a single published public prior reference reciting or clearly suggesting every element in the claim to argue obviousness, which is exactly what you need to argue anticipation under 35 USC §102 (prior art).

5. Enablement is assumed to be automatically satisfied in software patent cases by 1997's Fonar precedent by the CAFC: “As a general rule, where software constitutes part of a best mode of carrying out an invention, description of such a best mode is satisfied by a disclosure of the functions of the software. This is because, normally, writing code for such software is within the skill of the art, not requiring undue experimentation, once its functions have been disclosed.... Thus, flow charts or source code listings are not a requirement for adequately disclosing the functions of software."

Also consider University of Pittsburgh v. Varian (CAFC 2014) where the CAFC decided that 3D computer vision imaging of people and articulated human movement is trivial and obvious post-solution activity that need not even be described or considered part of the claims on a medical imaging patent. The function of human motion detection is entirely covered by mentioning the two steps that particular spots will be tracked and then motion inferred. It's literally that bad.

If it sounds to you like the CAFC is waging an undeclared war on software, you may be right.

The original meaning of the word "patent" might be a bit of a clue here.

The problem that patents tried to solve was of people keeping their innovations secret (in order to maintain an edge on their competitors), and that when they died their secrets died with them. Encouraging people to make public work they were doing anyway way, in the first instance, the way the patent system promoted progress.