I'm not the biggest fan of the patent system in this country, yet some of those are hard to argue with. I will, however, argue a couple for fun:

• covers displaying grammatically complete sentences while programming a thermostat - This is one of those examples where I'd like for someone to explain why you can patent this.
• covers a method of controlling an environmental control system from a remote to adjust the settings of the system - I'm not 100% certain, but I really wouldn't be surprised if there were products that did this before that patent was filed. I don't know when Honeywell actually first released a product with such a feature, but if they weren't the first I assume this could be argued.

Ah well, I'm no patent attorney. I don't know the ins and outs of this stuff but it sure seems like Nest will have some problems.