If a technology can be reasonably be kept as trade secret, a patent system provides an incentive to publish it as a patent instead (25 years guaranteed exclusivity instead of exclusivity until it somehow leaks or somebody else figures it out).
But some technologies are easy to figure out once you have the consumer device in your hand. In that case a patent system might help incentivize commercializing that technology at all. After all, why would you develop something only to invite everybody else to sell a cheaper version.
That is technically correct but in policy discussion and the Economics literature patents are usually linked to innovation (where innovation is defined as invention + commercialization). As the earlier poster suggests the link may not be as strong as its proponents argue, but we don’t have a lot of counter factual data. Innovative economies generally develop strong IP protection around the same time they become innovative.
> Innovative economies generally develop strong IP protection around the same time they become innovative.
This is another way of saying "actors in less advanced economies ignore IP protections until they've more or less caught up".
That was the US IP strategy, which it now decries when others follow it. Enabled by faster international feedback loops, China is, er, innovating on the strategy, simultaneously weaponizing IP law while also expropriating through various means.
No, it rewards the publication, the motivation being to improve welfare. There's no point in focusing on the intermediate target if it doesn't get you what you actually want.
The patent system is designed to reward the publication of technologies, not their development.