[gombotzd]

i have to disagree to your statement, which misses foundation.

First copyright is always a life long idea, but the focus of patents have always been to incentivice long term research efforts that have budget constraint by having a mid-term monopoly

problem today: a lot of trivial design-patents and even patents that are used in the wars between big corps. as one of my advisor board state - screw that patent, we cannot defend it anyway Behind a lot of those patents there is no research in the sense but it rather came out of "usual" engineering.

i think that the proof of non-trivial has to be a part of the application and is better suited than discussion about life-time - because patents could still have a strong point in basic-research

Problem is what to do with the already existing bogus patents - any suggestions?

[btilly]

First copyright is always a life long idea...

Not true in the USA until Disney started twisting the law. This idea has a longer history in Europe.

See http://www.arl.org/focus-areas/copyright-ip/2486-copyright-t... for a more detailed history.