The problem is that there's little incentive for a "guru" in a field to publish something that is obvious, and there is little incentive for a journal or conference to accept an application to present something that's obvious. However, there is a huge incentive to try to slip things that are obvious past the Patent Office.

Perhaps someone needs to start a "Journal of Prior Art" which would serve to publish as much obvious and prior art information as possible. Then we just need to figure out an incentive to get everyone to flood the system with ideas.