The problem with this is that while 20 years isn't a long time pre-Industrial Era, and isn't insurmountably long in the Industrial Era, in the Information Age (let's say 1980 on), 20 years is a crazy long time. Twenty years ago, supercomputers where about as powerful as the desktop I'm sitting at now, a desktop that's by modern standards slow (at work, it's a P4 with like 512 RAM). Twenty years ago, BBSes and IRC were as good as it gets. The Web 1.0 forums and Geocities sites would have been cutting edge, much less something like Reddit or Wikipedia. The cutting-edge stuff people are doing on here with location-based social networking (Loopt) or seamless on-the-Internet file storage (Dropbox) is the sci-fi of 20 years ago. 1,000 bit/s was considered a decent connection speed, whereas now anything under 1,000,000 bit/s (1 Mbps, or 128 KB/s) is considered slow.
In this environment, a 20-year patent lasts a life-time. Amazon's One-Click patent was granted in 1999. That means you have to steer clear of it or license it until 2019. That's 20 years that Amazon will be controlling a crucial feature of e-commerce sites.
MP3's patents will run until at least 2012. By the time MP3 (standardized in 1991) is patent-free, it'll be obselete, at best a legacy format. Heck, every music player (software and hardware) for the last few years has supported either MPEG-4 audio (AAC) or WMA, both of which sound better than MP3 at the same bit-rate. By the time patents on MPEG-4 stuff expire, it'll be at least 2020, and we'll be 1-2 generations further advanced.
My point is that for algorithmic, software, and business-model patents, even if they should be legitimate, a 20-year lifespan in the modern era is insane. Measured against the rate of progress, patents are lasting longer and longer, and by the time the patent is expired, there's no longer money in the previously-covered area.
In this environment, a 20-year patent lasts a life-time. Amazon's One-Click patent was granted in 1999. That means you have to steer clear of it or license it until 2019. That's 20 years that Amazon will be controlling a crucial feature of e-commerce sites.
MP3's patents will run until at least 2012. By the time MP3 (standardized in 1991) is patent-free, it'll be obselete, at best a legacy format. Heck, every music player (software and hardware) for the last few years has supported either MPEG-4 audio (AAC) or WMA, both of which sound better than MP3 at the same bit-rate. By the time patents on MPEG-4 stuff expire, it'll be at least 2020, and we'll be 1-2 generations further advanced.
My point is that for algorithmic, software, and business-model patents, even if they should be legitimate, a 20-year lifespan in the modern era is insane. Measured against the rate of progress, patents are lasting longer and longer, and by the time the patent is expired, there's no longer money in the previously-covered area.