In fact, nine of the 16 claims on Sorensen's patent relate to the waffling. What requires so much elaboration? "Spacing. Depth. All sorts of things," Sorensen offers, then fesses up. “Basically the attorneys write a bunch of b.s. and hope they bore the patent examiner to death and he'll approve it.”
Fighting off Starbucks [1]
Mark [2] filed a patent while working for a previous company. I saw the original idea, and he read me the original patent before being submitted to the patent board at the previous company. He also read me the patent after it came back from the patent board and I swear, I wouldn't have recognized it at all. Mark barely recognized it. The lawyers made all sorts of extra claims because of the parts involved. They removed some claims because of the parts involved.
I think the lawyers basically made stuff up and turned it into Legalese™ in order to keep their jobs.
[1] http://netbusiness.netscape.com/fsb_nb/features/sp_f_102601