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I've always wondered about this. Why is it that I've never heard of large corporations trying to lobby patent law into extending, much like how it happened over and over with copyright law? Had this battle already happened and I just never heard about it, or is there something in the law (or norms/culture surrounding it) that makes people never consider doing so?

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It does happen with drugs in the US, but in a roundabout way. In a nutshell, the original manufacturer releases a new version of their product with a new patent and it's existence makes the manufacture of the old clones illegal unless they go through an independent regulatory process.

I don't know much about drug regulation, but that sounds crazy. Do you have more info?

Some "life science" companies, in particular pharmaceutical, can extend the life of their patents by 5 years in some jurisdictions (at least here in Europe). This is called a Supplementary Protection Certificate [0] and is subject to certain conditions (e.g. clinical trials took a long time).

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supplementary_protection_certi...

EDIT: typo

It's not exactly an extension though--it's that they didn't get the benefit of the early part of their patent term because of regulatory delays, so they get to pad the back end to make up for that.

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