Of course. The "initial findings" on what's eventually expected to become a huge multi-billion device capable of breaking field intensity records for a picosecond or two are completely irrelevant to the idea of a relatively compact mobile craft that requires even more intense fields for basic operation. That's barely a step away from saying "these values are perfectly fine - magnetars exist, don't they?".

If the criterion for patentability is describing a "future state of the possible" where "possible" just means "might, under a highly generous interpretation, not directly contradict the basic laws of physics... maybe", is there a patent for a Dyson sphere yet?