I'm on the promotion committee at École Polytechnique de Montréal and it is not very well seen if someone has, for three years, a patent application and no publications whatsoever because they don't want to compromise the patent.
Academics need to keep other research on track at the same time as they're filing a patent. If I'm mono-disciplinary and I'm aiming for a patent, once the patent is issued and I do something else, it will not be very well seen.
There's an increasing tendency by the grant-awarding bodies—which as you know are the tri-councils or the tri-academies, or whatever you want to call them—toward measure impact, and patents are only one type of impact on the cards, and only for specific faculties. As you mentioned, copyright is better suited for computers and software.
I think it's important to measure societal impact beyond a patent as well.