If you research into 100 different ideas, and take them all the way from "Conception" to "Reduction to Practice" then you have a decent chance of winning a patent fight on them.

However, if you conceive of 100 different ideas, put them in your desk drawer, and then only pay attention to them (and reduce them to practice) when someone else has done something cool, you'll struggle to prove "Diligence" and hence won't be able to knock the other guy out.

The US patent system most certainly has flaws, but it does rewards inventor for inventing stuff, as opposed to people who can fill forms out. Alternatively, you can reward people who share (by filing a patent).

Neither first-to-file or first-to-invent are perfect (and the tradeoffs are to some extent unavoidable) but the founders of the US felt sufficiently strongly about the whole thing that it got a mention in the Constitution... having crossed the Atlantic more than a few times, my conclusion is the US has made a choice which is congruent with other aspects of American life.

I tried to like WebObjects, I really did. But it never seemed to work properly on my machine, always some bug or another. I bought the books, wrote a few small apps - and never seemed to be getting anywhere. That, combined with the fact that it clearly isn't getting any investment from Apple and the community is small (compared to other app servers & frameworks), made me very reluctant to invest more of my time. Ruby On Rails however "just works" (thanks, Locomotive!, clearly has a future and vibrant community, and does exactly what I need (rapid development of in-house web apps). Yes, WebObjects is nice - in theory - but in practice unless Apple's prepared to invest in it's future, I wouldn't start any new projects in it.