I guess that that is the point. I worked for a similar company. They were not interested in groundbreaking one-of-a-kind patent. They were looking for something to use as a countermeasure if another company in the same sector sues them.

A new chemical process, a new antibiotic, or something of that scale can be used to create a new successful product, save lives, etc. Patents were designed to make sure that companies could profit from them, but that the knowledge was not lost just because they keep it secret.

In software development, I have seen a lot of "method to send content to a remote storage using gesture-based commands" (this one is made up). When they just mean that a developer implemented a drag & drop touch functionality for the phone that sends a file to a server. A necessary implementation, but hardly an invention as any developer will come with a similar solution in minutes if presented with the problem.