The law really is progressing (Score 1)

This ruling in no way shows that the USPTO did anything wrong. If the courts tell the USPTO to grant patents on everything, that's what they'll do; if the courts change their mind and tell the patent office to reject obvious patents, then the patent office will gladly do so.

If you look a the PDF, you'll see repeated reference to a line in KSR v Teleflex, a ruling from just last year: "The combination of familiar elements according to known methods is likely to be obvious when it does no more than yield predictable results." This is entirely common sense, but it wasn't how the Federal Circuit's appeals court saw things when the BB patent was granted, so the patent office didn't have the power to use such logic to make a rejection until KSR v Teleflex. And there are more recent rulings, some already handed down by the Federal Circuit's appeals court and some on the way, further reigning in what is patentable and giving the patent office the power to reject patents like the BB patent.

So the USPTO is (and has been) doing the right thing under the law: when the law was a watered-down mess that said that anything is patentable, they rubber-stamped. Now that the courts are granting them the power to reject again, they're using that power. Expect to see more rejections like this in the near future.