The Netherlands was the last country in Europe to introduce patent law AFTER Philips stole bulb manufacturing technology from Edison (Philips is now a huge patent holder and actively steals ideas from startups to turn them into patents).
If you can't innovate, buy (or steal) someone else's invention, and use a government granted monopoly (i.e. patent) to prevent anyone else from innovating further and making a better version.
Maybe patents provide an incentive to be innovative, but they also create a barrier to innovating on top of technology that is protected by patents.
