Compromising remote systems puts researchers, their work, and patient rights at risk. Patents are published publicly and available free of charge, so I'm not sure how that would be a reasonable justification for compromising other's computers. "Research" per se isn't patentable anyway.
Patents provide country-by-country protection -- a US Patent doesn't mean anything in other countries - except for being evidence of prior art in their own patent offices.
Also, some/many countries have laws that disallow patents or patent infringement claims associated with medicine.
