There are probably 100 or 1000s of issued patents related to spell checking -- they can solve same problem as long as how they solve the problem is different.
What you're calling a "how" can be a list of simple "what"s.
> In an electronic word processing system for creating and editing a document, the document comprising a plurality of sentences, a combined spelling and grammar dialog box for displaying both spelling and grammatical errors in one of the plurality of sentences in the document comprising:
> a rich text edit command (RTEC) field for displaying both spelling and grammatical errors found within the sentence and editing the sentence;
> an error title line for indicating whether the error displayed in the RTEC field is a spelling error or a grammatical error;
> a suggestions list box for displaying a suggestions list, the suggestions list comprises a fist plurality of suggestions operative for correcting the spelling error found if the error type displayed in the error title line indicates a spelling error, or the suggestions lists comprises a second plurality of suggestions for correcting the grammatical error found if the error type displayed in the error title lined indicates a grammatical error;
> a plurality of common command buttons operative for correcting both errors in the spelling and in the grammatical composition of the sentence displayed in the RTEC field.
In other words: an editable sentence, the description of a spelling or grammatical error, a list of suggestions to fix the error, and some buttons to apply a suggestion, skip, etc.
That specific combination of UI elements was perhaps new in 1996 (as were most GUIs), but not what I'd call an "invention" so valuable to society that it deserves 20 years of protection from free market competition.
The actual spelling and grammar analysis code might be worthy of protection for a year or two, but they probably lifted most of that from some college kid's paper.
For about 10 years the US had a judge made "flash of genius" standard that was part of determining patentibility. It was eliminated by the US Congress in 1952.
I haven't done the research, but I imagine the flash-of-genius standard was repealed because it is impossible to objectively quantify. Current non-obviousness analysis incorporates some things that might be evidence of a flash of genius without going there, such as, market success, unmet need, and so on. But usually non-obviousness is determined if one cannot find subject matter in printed publications that one of ordinary skill in the art could combine to make the claimed invention.
There are probably 100 or 1000s of issued patents related to spell checking -- they can solve same problem as long as how they solve the problem is different.