Patents in fact distort the investment and disincentives projects which cannot be patented, like foundational physics.
If access to government coersion is the only moat you have, then it's not a great business anyhow.
Discussion
Against Intellectual Property is a must read on the topic:
https://mises.org/library/book/against-intellectual-property
One defense of patents is hear is that a smaller business with a new idea never has a chance to compete against a large conglomerate that can just steal their ideas and use their immense resources to scale and make it to market faster. I don't have any good answers either way, but I can understand that argument. A lot of good arguments against patents as well.
In reality patente hinder small business exponentially more! Big business has the budget to lobby and bribe to register patents, and to take smaller business to court in case of infringement.
I agree, I think patents definitely favor large corporations more than small businesses. A lot of corporations simply have defensive patents, not for the sake of actually producing a product of their own, but to prevent other companies from producing a competing product. But I certainly can see a benefit toward small start ups with a unique product idea trying to make it to market against larger companies. Perhaps make patents only last a year or two rather than the decade plus they last now?