It would probably be much harder to justify. IP law exists because it's considered a net good to society (everyone doesn't agree on this, but this is why we hav

It would probably be much harder to justify. IP law exists because it's considered a net good to society (everyone doesn't agree on this, but this is why we have it at least). Of course, it doesn't help that all the money goes into lobbying on behalf of IP holders who want to extend the reach of IP. In theory, patents have good and bad side effects. The good effect of a patent is that it encourages people to spend lots of money on R&D because it gives them a period of time to recoup that investment once they bring something to market. The bad effect, obviously, is that this artificial monopoly can prevent other people from bringing similar things to market. But it's (again, in theory) a net good because the end result is that it creates an additional financial incentive to create new things, and once the patent expires then the negative aspect goes away. You are left with new stuff that may not have otherwise been brought into existence. The goal of a patent system is to benefit the population as a whole, not patent holders, even though patent holders benefit from it as well. If it only benefitted patent holders, and didn't have this philosophical underpinning of benefitting everyone, we wouldn't have patent laws in the first place. Copyright is similar in that it is designed with known pros and cons, but is legally rationalized as being a net good for society. The goal of copyright is to create an environment in which more stuff is created overall. The ultimate legal justification for copyright is the overall positive effect on society, it is not to benefit the copyright holder (that's just a happy side effect for them). So it's a weird dynamic where both the patent system and copyright law exist to benefit society, but all of the money poured into changing it is going to come from IP holders who want to manipulate the law so that they can make more money than they are now. There are no lobbyists representing "all of society", unfortunately, so it's a very one-sided battle that only ends when judges and legislators push back on the IP holders. To answer the question, I'm guessing that it's much easier to push for extending copyright because the societal cost to that is much less clear. It's easy to make an argument that (for example) pharmaceutical patents should not be extended because people will suffer. Cheaper drugs don't come until patents expire and competition is allowed to take its course. On the other hand, it's harder to make a case for the harm done by extending the period of time in which (for example) only Disney can sell Mickey Mouse t-shirts, so it's a lot easier for the entertainment industry to lobby for longer copyright periods than it is for other industries to lobby for longer patent periods.