I have to admit I'm not very familiar with how patents work in this field in particular, but in general, patents seem to have a huge limiting effect on research. For example, in video coding, nobody wants to invest into making a new codec just to find that their codec falls under a patent owned by the MPEG, and it's really hard to make a new codec which doesn't fall under those patents.

If the patent is on the process for creating LK-99, then obviously that patent only has worth in that people are going to buy LK-99 from the patent holder for development of new applications, and eventually marketing of the applications themselves. The same people may use their initiative to generate a bunch of patents on applications of LK-99, and indeed most of its applications may end up being patented, but that's not to say progress will be halted because of this.