The thing I think Doctorow is missing is the motivation at the engineering level to get a patent. There is very minimal strategizing between corporate attorney's about how the patent might be strategic. If something is patentable, the engineering teams will often pursue a patent mostly motivated from a bragging rights perspective. It's a great way to give recognition to engineers. Most of Google's/Microsoft's portfolio are collections of patents like that. Maybe at a portfolio level there is some strategizing, but not at the level of the engineers actually inventing things.