There's mostly two reasons companies invest in bullshit patents:
1) If you're a big company with lots of resources, and you're losing business to a smaller but faster moving competitor, you sue them for infringing on your bullshit patents. Distract them, drain their precious time and minimal funding, etc. Very effective way for large, slow moving bureaucratic companies to stamp out startup competitors. Doesn't even matter if you win the suit, even if you lose, as long as you can drain their time/energy/$$$ on fighting it, you've won. I you both drain $2 mil on lawyers and 500 hours of employee time, that's nothing for you, but it's crippling for them
2) If you're a smaller company, you really don't have the resources for "offence" (suing others as a strategy), but patents can still be useful for "defence." Basically, if you have your own portfolio of bullshit patents, when someone sues you with one of their BS patents, you counter-sue with one of your BS patents. This often results in both sides settling, giving each other a "licence" to use the patent (that is BS in the first place). And even without settling, it does make you a less attractive target - like if you actually win your countersuit, you could do some legit damage to even a bug company. While if you have no patents, you're an easy target, bigger companies can sue you freely without risk. Patents are actually pretty cheap to get, it probably is worth spending a few hundred thousand dollars getting a handful of patents purely for the defensive value
This use of patents as basically a way to "fight dirty" against competitors, plus full-on patent trolls, is basically the entire software patent industry.
Most software patents are serious, serious bullshit, the stuff that gets patented doesn't remotely resemble truly innovative work, and there's mostly plenty of prior art. But there are no repercussions for patent offices that simply mail it in, and just grant whatever bullshit comes across their desk. In fact, if you're a patent office, granting bullshit patents is good for business! It encourages more patent filing, more revenue for them, and it encourages more lawsuits, more revenue for their friends in the courts.
If you have no experience with software patents, I encourage everyone to go on a patent search site like https://www.lens.org/lens/ , and search for granted patents in your field. They're a bit tough to read at first - the relevant section is the "claims" section, and generally claim 1 is the "base" claim - as long as you violate that, you've violated the patent. Then most of the other claims build on the base claim (though there may be more than one base claim). Read a handful, you'll be shocked at how utterly garbage they are. For example, in my field, there's a good 10 or so granted patents that are simply descriptions of extremely basic versions of Vehicle Routing Problem solvers, all granted in the last decade or so, despite the fact that the published literature on VRP solvers goes back to the 1950s/60s.
There’s also the issue of company valuations being based on the “value of your IP”. Being able to pull out a large number of patents to show your investors can raise the stock price, whether or not the patents are any good.
1) If you're a big company with lots of resources, and you're losing business to a smaller but faster moving competitor, you sue them for infringing on your bullshit patents. Distract them, drain their precious time and minimal funding, etc. Very effective way for large, slow moving bureaucratic companies to stamp out startup competitors. Doesn't even matter if you win the suit, even if you lose, as long as you can drain their time/energy/$$$ on fighting it, you've won. I you both drain $2 mil on lawyers and 500 hours of employee time, that's nothing for you, but it's crippling for them
2) If you're a smaller company, you really don't have the resources for "offence" (suing others as a strategy), but patents can still be useful for "defence." Basically, if you have your own portfolio of bullshit patents, when someone sues you with one of their BS patents, you counter-sue with one of your BS patents. This often results in both sides settling, giving each other a "licence" to use the patent (that is BS in the first place). And even without settling, it does make you a less attractive target - like if you actually win your countersuit, you could do some legit damage to even a bug company. While if you have no patents, you're an easy target, bigger companies can sue you freely without risk. Patents are actually pretty cheap to get, it probably is worth spending a few hundred thousand dollars getting a handful of patents purely for the defensive value
This use of patents as basically a way to "fight dirty" against competitors, plus full-on patent trolls, is basically the entire software patent industry.
Most software patents are serious, serious bullshit, the stuff that gets patented doesn't remotely resemble truly innovative work, and there's mostly plenty of prior art. But there are no repercussions for patent offices that simply mail it in, and just grant whatever bullshit comes across their desk. In fact, if you're a patent office, granting bullshit patents is good for business! It encourages more patent filing, more revenue for them, and it encourages more lawsuits, more revenue for their friends in the courts.
If you have no experience with software patents, I encourage everyone to go on a patent search site like https://www.lens.org/lens/ , and search for granted patents in your field. They're a bit tough to read at first - the relevant section is the "claims" section, and generally claim 1 is the "base" claim - as long as you violate that, you've violated the patent. Then most of the other claims build on the base claim (though there may be more than one base claim). Read a handful, you'll be shocked at how utterly garbage they are. For example, in my field, there's a good 10 or so granted patents that are simply descriptions of extremely basic versions of Vehicle Routing Problem solvers, all granted in the last decade or so, despite the fact that the published literature on VRP solvers goes back to the 1950s/60s.