granting of patents for obvious solutions to non-obvious problems

Such a realization may be “an insight”, and the result may in some cases be a useful contribution to society, but I believe the pertinent question is rather to characterize whether granting such patents is likely to advance or hinder the art (or whether it's likely to improve or worsen society).

In the case of the patent discussed in the article, it appears that the idea was independently conceived of, put into use, and publicized, without the motivation or other help of patents. The only argument I can think of that patents might have helped advance the art in this case would be to argue that Red Bend Software employees were funded in part by the hope that they would be granted this patent, and that they would not have been funded if the threshold for granting patents were such that patents were not granted for obvious solutions to non-obvious problems, and thus that the idea would have been delayed by a couple of years in its application. I don't find this argument very convincing. Perhaps someone more knowledgable can offer testament or evidence of this, or perhaps someone else can provide a better argument (though likely this isn't a good forum to seek one).

Similarly, in the case of the previous patent where I heard this argument made (viz. Amazon's “one-click” patent), my impression as an ignorant outsider is that Amazon would have conceived of, implemented and popularized the idea whether or not it was patentable.

(Two obvious arguments that granting such patents hinders the industry are that doing so incurs significant legal costs, and often hinders rather than promotes application of the idea.)