> A major problem infrequently mentioned is that a lot of people, especially in parts of business far from R&D, see patents solely as a way to recoup private investment, not supposed to be balanced with public interest after limited times, and they use number of patents as a proxy for amount of innovation.

Lots of people in R&D see things this way. My friends in "Big Engineering" are proud of the number of patents they have to their name.