I'm sure you know, but let's just lay it out anyway - patents like this are often filed to prevent the competition doing something, rather than being used for their intended purpose (protecting an innovative product from being copied).

My brother has some experience with this - his employer will (or used to, at least) pay employees for patent submissions if they are successful. The company funds the legal costs of the patent application etc. He applied for a couple, one of which was basically a glass screen that changes contrast / colour depending on what's behind it so that the text remains visible (think bus stop advert). To my mind that's not novel, and it doesn't pass the "not obvious to someone who does this kind of thing every day" test either, but they thought it was viable.

Note that this wasn't even some kind of clever mechanism / low level implementation of how to do it, just the idea that it could be done.

Patent law is, ah, patently ridiculous.