The purpose of a patent is to compensate you not for inventing something but for disclosing exactly how it works. If what you did is straightforward, why should we grant a generation-long monopoly to whoever bothers to do it first?
I'm not advocating whether or not the patent should be awarded. Instead, I was trying to indicate that I felt like in 1995, it may not have been straightforward simply because not many people would have thought to even ask the question.
I guess one way to ask it might be, "how does one find a straightforward path to an unknown destination?"
