It's simply a matter of securing IP. Their engineers might develop something interesting, but testing or analysis shows it's not really marketable or worth the manufacturing time or whatever, but since it is, in fact, a different method of doing something, it's "Intellectual Property", and thus may very well be patentable.
Even is SP has no plans to market or utilize the IP now, it still gives them leverage in case somebody else comes up with a similar design, and/or gives them protection in case they develop something new years down the road, and that prior design fits that new design a little better.
Places like Microsoft, IBM, Boeing and thousands of other places do this sort of thing daily.
The problem here is that we already know how SP will intentionally twist the patent system to their own ends, so patents that are even sort of vague enough, will invaribly eventually be used to bludgeon some small startup company who had the misfortune to develop something similar.
I don't think what SP is doing here is entirely "illegal", per se, and thus there's little chance of those patents not being granted.
