I generally agree, but the length of a patent should probably be proportional to the R&D costs (and possibly other factors). Pharmaceutical development is insan

I generally agree, but the length of a patent should probably be proportional to the R&D costs (and possibly other factors). Pharmaceutical development is insanely expensive and risky, if we want new, revolutionary drugs to be brought to market the pharma companies need to be able to make a profit (this may be an unpopular opinion because of the price gouging pharma companies are infamous for, but this is part of the reason pharma companies aren’t developing new antibiotics yet, which will be a disaster when we need them). The fact that novel drugs can have the same patent lifetime as the bit operations required to average two integers correctly is insane. Evaluating the appropriate patent length in practice is probably difficult in that it would be gamed by applicants.