I was thinking in a similar direction. What about an adaptive patent law? Where the duration of the protection in a particular area of interest can be set by e.

I was thinking in a similar direction. What about an adaptive patent law? Where the duration of the protection in a particular area of interest can be set by e.g. a committee (with a strict ruleset and a big time constant of course). So when there is not much progress in a certain area (e.g. cancer or nuclear fusion) the patent protection is increased to incentivise investments. A problem with this approach are obviously the unknown unknowns, which might prevent this system from incentivising inventions like the transistor. So this approach can probably only help with problem driven areas and not in cases where the tech innovation gives rise to new problems/solutions