well wait a second, whether or not they do facilitate is not the same thing as whether or not they are necessary for it to happen. Clearly, the latter is true since there's that other 33%
And there are other, less obvious, reasons VCs may be interested in patents. The second study (and other studies) showed that having at least one patent is correlated with significantly higher chances of a startup having a successful exit.
The reasons behind this correlation is not clear, but if it presents such a powerful signal, VCs have a good reason to look for patents.