Okay? This is not relevant. What matters here is that they have developed this technology. “Patents” in the title of the article is a way of saying that they have developed the technology.
For what it's worth, confusing patents and patent applications is a pet peeve of mine as a former patent examiner. I've seen people criticize the USPTO for apparently granting a patent on some nonsense, but when I look at it, the USPTO rejected the application. The problem is that people can't tell the difference between a patent application and patent. I saw an opportunity to clarify this issue and I took it.
Thats not how you need to interpret ”patents” grammatically. You could read that as ”is in the process of patenting”
Is there a good verb for ”files patent applications for”?
You want to consider readability of the headline.
Having a pending patent, or even a granted patent, does not mean the technology described has been invented. There are many many patents on all sorts of infinite energy devices for example. It should go without saying that none of those work.