[jtreminio]

It takes over a decade for most major pharmaceuticals to go through all required research and clinical trials before they ever reach the general population.

Costs can easily go past tens of millions of dollars. A 2-4 year copyright period would require new medications to either be prohibitively expensive, or not be researched at all and only the most profitable diseases would ever get looked into.

[okcando]

It's alright, copyright doesn't govern pharmaceuticals anyway. That's what patents are for and they expire much more quickly than copyrights do though it's longer than four years.

Functional ideas or features are explicitly excluded from copyright or trademark protection.