[plib]

Originally Posted by Kali Yuga

Yeah, not really seeing it.

There's a lot of proprietary stuff in software that actually works very well, and in some cases better than an open format. E.g. iOS is proprietary and locked into hardware;

Excellent example. Very astute of you to find a company which has never been accused of benefiting from the assimilation of other people's prior inventions.

Short patent spans also creates issues. For example, drug manufacturers have a limited period of time when they have an exclusive right to sell a drug; after that, other companies can make a generic. The result is that branded drugs are very expensive for many years, as the pharmaceuticals try to recoup their R&D and earn profits as quickly as possible. I.e. shorter patent terms may in fact discourage drug development, and drive up prices before the generic is available.

In addition, drug manufacturers find ways to work around the shorter patent period. They engineer minor formula changes to make a "new" drug (which is no more effective than the old one), or combine two existing and tested drugs to make a "new" drug with a new patent.

This has a lot more to do with the ease with which patent offices grant patents, often on dubious grounds, than with the merits of a longer patent term.

I'd also say that the relative unimportance of content is exactly what makes it feasible to have longer copyright durations than patents. If you have a disease, and only one company has the right to make the drug to cure it for 75 years, even if the company goes bust, that's going to present a serious problem. If you wrote a cheap paperback mystery novel in the 1950s, no one is likely to die because it's out of print.

That bit I think you have right. The public outrage if they were being ripped off for statins, diabetes medications, antibiotics, et. al. for 75 years or more would greatly outweigh any "campaign contributions" the industry could lubricate the politicians with, and the politicians know it. They're not going to commit electoral suicide. But they can get away with it on copyright, partly because it's not as significant in terms of lifesaving effects and partly because there is the safety valve of unauthorized copying. It's a little more difficult more difficult to pirate Lipitor than Led Zeppelin.