Can you elaborate on this? My guess would be, that because of their status as a government backed research institute, they invent a lot, but let others do the commercialisation. So patent fees seem like a natural choice for them, to recover their investments.

Seconded. Would love to hear about “best Fraunhofer practices” and fort hand experience.

What could one improve how the operate?

They had patents on MP3 that were a pain in the arse 30 years ago.