Just to add on to what hendzen said, they are already rather expensive as it is: $15,000 for 20 years (in Canada, where I'm from). Hardly affordable for the ave

Just to add on to what hendzen said, they are already rather expensive as it is: $15,000 for 20 years (in Canada, where I'm from). Hardly affordable for the average small-time inventor. A friend of mine whom just patented a method of preventing over-the-shoulder spying for PIN input devices and could only afford to buy patent protection for 1 year (and for some odd reason, it cannot be increased with future payments--so whatever you commit to buying in the outset is how much protection you'll receive, period.) Increasing it further would simply make the price far too prohibitive. As for limiting the patent validity period, the current 20 years that most nations follow is not all that long depending on the circumstance. A better method (if it's even regulatable) is X years of protection OR until you recoup your original investment + X % of return (whichever occurs first). The problem is to then police the claims of cost to invent the patent, which is a whole can of worms on its own.