What you have pointed out in this article is just one of the many perspectives on this issue. Another would be from the researcher’s POV. The philosophy behind research is that researchers set out to find new and novel approaches, so that ideas get rigorously analyzed and the best are chosen (years later) for actual use and implementation. Researchers don’t have the means to implement and mass produce what they achieve and so their ideas depend on future investments.

The academic and research community is years ahead of what the industry is actually forcing you to use, and it’s all because the industry must make a profit and they are not going to conduct research on something that isn’t going to have a bright future (in terms of $). This is where the research community comes in and invests in the foggiest ideas and tries to come up with breakthroughs. One tends to acknowledge that it is their right to actually have some sort of right over what they have achieved years before the industry even thought about it, so that when it actually blossomed and came to fruit, someone will respect what they have achieved.

Just to note, researchers (academics) nearly always publish their findings in great detail. This is unlike companies which tend to keep them to themselves (also called trade secrets!). So the industry can easily use other people’s work and make astronomical profits without properly acknowledging what they have used. A patent in this case can actually protect the intellectual property/inventions of these people and in case of academic institutions, they tend to use that to finance future projects and the loop just goes on again.