Indeed. Patents incentivize investment in R&D. There is an argument to be made that the scope of patentable inventions should be more limited, in particular preventing trivial patents that didn’t require substantial R&D, and maybe also that patents shouldn’t last as long.
But doing away completely with patents would certainly stifle companies’ willingness to invest in R&D. They’d rather wait for someone else to invent something they can copy.
In real life, although the amount of incentive is different in different industries; and if one's main experience is in an industry where the amount of incentive is low, it's easy to imagine it's the same everywhere
The study could have revealed that industries without patent protection evolve to have better trade secret security, effectively leveling the benefits of patents.
Literally any product you send to the consumer can be reverse-engineered at comparatively low cost. The world doesn’t just revolve around server-side software.
But doing away completely with patents would certainly stifle companies’ willingness to invest in R&D. They’d rather wait for someone else to invent something they can copy.