Patents stop people copying the tech before Radix is ready to open source the lot, if third parties develop tech & apps for Radix ecosystem I'm sure they wont be hit by patent infringement notices, but if bad actors try nefarious things they would.

When Radix has been developed by basically one guy, it's obviously centralised (i.e. if he goes under a bus before completion things would be grim), but that's exactly the same situation as bitcoin circa 2007/8, everything was centralised around Satoshi until he finished and released a viable version.

The difference between bitcoin/satoshi and radix/fuserleer is in Satoshi's time people were not thinking of ICO's, but today the chances of someone launching a cynical clone of Radix with scam ICO is near 100%, and that would damage Radix a lot.

My view is those who don't like patents should hold off investing until they're comfortable.