Unfortunately I'm not a patent attorney and am thus out of my depth regarding actual patent law, but a friend and I were just discussing the concept of "obviousness". To my understanding, in order for an idea or process to be patentable it can't be "obvious" to a typical person in the field -- it has to be "novel". In my recent discussion, my position was that an idea is almost guaranteed to be novel if no one is doing it and it turns out to be profitable. Profitability plus lack of action implies that no one has thought of the idea.
My friend was arguing that there are some ideas that are so incredibly obvious that no one writes about them, that no one thinks will be profitable, and that actually are profitable once someone does them -- but I don't think that's the case. There may be some such ideas, but considering that people are wont to try vast numbers of ideas on the mere suspicion that they might be profitable, it's hard to believe that there are many obvious, profitable ideas that everyone thinks will be unprofitable.
Thus, my argument was that no matter how obvious an idea may seem in hindsight, if no one has done it or written about it, and it turns out to be profitable, then the idea is almost certain to be novel.
I agree with your friend. The world is full of good ideas. Ask any venture capitalist. The question is which ideas someone will put capital behind.
We had pie pans for centuries, but only a few decades ago did someone think of shaping them slightly differently, making them out of plastic, and selling them as Frisbees.
We had metal springs for decades before anyone considered selling them as Slinkies.
A year from now, some brand of clothing will become wildly popular, and its designer will earn a fortune. And today, any competent clothing designer could stitch together the same garments and share in the profit---if only they knew which design was profitable.
I just filed a Provisional Patent Application in December for something that I don't think is obvious. So far, the gadget that I sell is profitable, and perhaps, by the end of summer, I will decide whether it is worth spending the money to do a regular Patent Application. (A Provisional Patent Application is, essentially, staking out a place in line, so that no one else can patent an invention that you are already selling.)
The definition of obviousness is as you stated in the opening. It is extremely technical, and as an expert witness in a patent trial involving the Kryptonite bicycle lock, we spent hours on the subject.
As an entrpreneur and patent holder I can also tell you that many unobvious ideas don't sell worth a darn, and many, many obvious ideas sell like crazy and all the other possible permutations. Things don't even sell because of capital backing or not, it may just come down to having a product champion in the company, other priorities, packaging errors, cost of substitutes, power of brand or market share of substitutes, etc.