You know how people say "Devil you know is better than God you don't"?
Excel is that Devil people know. It's not the best tool for a lot of stuffs but it let's people do things.
I saw a co-worker generate sequence for formula in excel for another cell in excel. They wanted to do average of all January data, instead of averageif/sumif/countif etc, they generated a sequence a1+a13+a25...... And used excels' drag down thing to make the formula. I'm like who could even verify it.
Now think, patents are similar things but for with more money. And imagine if someone else had similar idea and made slightly similar website you go sue them coz you had the idea first.