I think the issue is initially when things were being invented there was a general lack of understanding of things. When car manufacturers first discovered how to bind metal to rubber (think tires), they didn't even patent it. There wasn't enough knowledge or skilled people to do the experimentation needed. They didn't want to patent it at that point they would just be teaching competition how to do it and within X number of years lose their advantage, and a minor variation in the process could allow them to compete anyway.
And what is the difference between discovery and invention? Anything science related is discovery.
Worse, money only goes into research that has a high level of profit potential, meaning that only if it can be patented. This structure is very detrimental to all societies.
Who knows how many times things that could be very beneficial to society never see the light of day. And if there is something so beneficial to society that is discovered then the cost skyrockets giving companies huge profits. Even worse, what if something is found to totally eliminate a disease but isn't patentable? The company surely isn't going to release that information if it's in an area they're trying to generate profits. On top of that the low-profit-margin solution will have to fight the big-profit companies marketing campaigns directly or indirectly against them. That is totally the opposite behaviour behind the point of innovation and capitalism.
The purpose of capitalism is to drive innovation, and the point of innovation is to reduce costs to zero, so then those savings can be past onto increasing innovation in other needed areas; Currently those profits are used to further research of other profit-potential patentable drugs. Thankfully we have universities but even those people resources and their efforts are driven much of the time by big companies looking for profitable options.
Discovery and innovation should be rewarded by society, however preventing others from easily furthering an innovation or using it in further inventions causes a huge delay (and potentially even permanently) to
People fear monger and say innovation won't happen if you can't have patents, which I don't believe to be true. One of the main keys is you need education systems in place, and we have those.