I think at the moment there's an incentive, probably from a lot of venture capitalists who want to have something to sell as their exit strategy when they capitalize on the company they have invested in.... Companies decide that if they want to get venture capital, then they need to get patents. The venture capitalists will push toward the patents when they want to move towards their exit strategy.
Patents are also important for the firm when they start to collaborate. More and more firms need external expertise when they want to go towards the market for the clinical trials, for prototyping, and other subjects, or just the production and commercialization. They need to protect their IP before they can collaborate, so they can clearly mark that something is theirs, that something else is yours, and that that is how they're going to move forward as an alliance or partnership.
They need to patent, but there's a race to be the first at what we call in French the Bureau canadien des Brevets, the patent office. Maybe firms are spending too many resources on patenting, and once it's time to commercialize then they're left fairly fragile or are weakened somehow.