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I won't claim to agree with the viewpoint I'm going to explain, but it's a viewpoint typical of many government segments (US government, at least).
Basically, it's not up to the government to proactively protect rights. What the government does is provide a mechanism by which people can protect their rights themselves. In this viewpoint, the PTO doesn't search for prior technology before granting a patent. According to law, Nestle should have searched for & disclosed the prior technology, explaining in their patent application how their technology differed from the prior technology enough that it wasn't infringing. Needless to say, nobody (or at least very few applicants) actually do this.
So the actual effect is that PTO will grant the patent then, when the previous user of the technology files suit (or the patent holder files suit against the previous user of the technology) the competing claims are examined & the loser's patent is invalidated. But the whole viewpoint depends on the user defending their rights. Until somebody files suit, both patents are valid. (Very strange, but as I said before this isn't something I agree with.)
This is, IMO, a practical solution for a problem that was essentially insurmountable in the past. The fact that it's still applied, even when modern technology allows for a better solution, is mostly bureaucratic inertia. (And the part that isn't inertia is probably that this viewpoint is applied in areas where modern technology doesn't have a better solution. For instance, this same viewpoint is why a person needs to break the law before they can ask a judge to rule on whether or not the law is valid. (Criminal law, of course-similar policies apply to civil law but they're harder to describe.) If a person isn't affected by a law (i.e. not subject to punishment for having broken it) then they don't have the legal 'standing' to challenge the law.
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