[Commons-Law] Patent Protection! Why 20 years!

[Venkatesh Hariharan]

On Fri, 2005-04-22 at 12:56 +0530, Shishir K Jha wrote:
<snip>
> Questions: Why is the product patent period under TRIPS
> restricted/enhanced to 20 years? Why not less or more? Is there any - as
> one would expect - direct relation established between the length of
> monopoly protection and the minimum time required to recuperate the cost
> that are sunk into R&D expenditure.

This is not a direct answer but I remember that at MIT there was a Prof.
Marshal Van Alstyne who was looking into this subject and had proposed a
shorter time duration for copyrights on software. A google search on him
may get some useful results. I think he is now with univ. of Michigan.

Hope this helps...

Venky