The terms for both patent and copyright are way too long. Instead of increasing over the years as we advanced further into the Digital Age, they should have been gradually decreasing. The whole point of the US patent and copyright system is not to "give a special reward" to inventors and authors, but to "promote the Progress of Science and the useful Arts" by building up the public domain commons of inventions and art. The current law, with its lenghthy terms and slipshod processes that invite abuse by trolls and encourage the smothering oppression by monopoly power, is at odds with those original goals. It needs to be torn down completely and rebuilt for this not-so-new century.