At any rate again, in large groups like this, there is a conflict on patents. Patents are used as weapons against other large groups on one hand (equal to equal) and smaller wannabes on the other (swatting flies). The result is that day to day, there is little incentive to patent or publish anything. It's not a core objective. Now and then a promising product direction is identified and then real effort is put in papering it up. But that's only as a weapon against the others - certainly not for the advancement of mankind. The rest of the knowledge and experience dies with the brains that carry it (although occasionally they find the time to write a book.)
Finally, few "completed" technologies get abandoned outright, first they get spun off or sold to some other business. Even the patent stash - if there is one - is worth some money. What does get abandonned without any publication is mountains of smaller projects in engineering or research or manufacturing groups - which have other day to day concerns and are busy and have no issue with just shelving hundreds of smaller projects and turning attention to the next hundreds of smaller projects.
Do NOT count on patents to solve the problem of engineering and science waste.