Not all patents are equally useful: Apple has published a patent for sound management in the browser.

The Apple patent itself , issued on April 23, is extremely simple, and can easily be described with two simple illustrations:

1. Actually, there is a diagram of the interface for controlling the sound in the browser, consisting of the “Mute” button and the volume control engine.


2. Table diagram of the saved sound settings for each site. It is not clear why they needed a separate “Mute” column if the value 0 could be used in the “Volume” column denoting the same. Already understandable.

This is the patent that the US patent machine passed through. Surprised? I, too!
Without further thinking (5 consonants in a row!) Slyly, I went to the Opera browser site, and in 5 seconds I found a dozen or so topics describing exactly the same functions - people from 2003 asked to implement it in Opera.
By the way, Opera has long been able to turn off sounds in the browser through the context menu (F12), and there are also site settings for turning off sound on any site (the same Mute, in general):

True, the technical implementation does not drown out the sound in flash movies, but these are already details with the patent that are not related ...

Question number 1: how can I issue such a patent? The patent has not yet been issued, but only published, which, however, is one step away from the issue.
Question number 1: is it not a shame to file a request for such a patent? :)
Question number 2: Is it possible to challenge such a patent if it is issued?
Question number 3: Is this case just another proof that patents are an evil in information technology, hampering development?