[bediger4000]

The traditional reason is to grant incentive for its creation in the first place.

Most certainly, that's the nominal, and even in the USA, constitutional basis of copyright and patents. But the actual implementation over the last 100 years seems to have veered away from creating incentives, and into creating something naively akin to ownership, with state enforcement.

I hope we have more experimentation on regulatory regimes

Based on the CAFC's decision here, and it's history, we're only going to experiment with "more" and "stricter" regimes. We've (the USA) never really experimented with loosening "IP" monopolies, despite data and logic pointing towards shorter monopolies as closer to optimum.

I'd also have to take exception the "pharmacy has benefitted from long-lasting monopolies". That's probably true simplistically (When was the last time Smith Klein Glaxo didn't turn a huge profit?) but in the manner of creating tons of medicines for The Rest of Us, it seems to have failed. India and some African countries actually allow infringing compounds, because the price of authentic compounds is set high. Also, the people of the USA pay way more for medications than most other countries. This whole topic is subject to argument, but certainly pharmacy patents relate to high prices and unavailability.