Society has allowed copyright to extend virtually forever, while patents tend to last just 20 years. If you have money to invest in either industry with similar risk, which are you going to take a chance on? The one that will support you for life, and your family until the end of time, naturally. This indicates that we favour entertainment more than other types of intellectual property.
Not really; time is hardly the only factor you should take into account.
Firstly, copyright is limited to a specific work, while patents are usually more generic - I can invent a whole new literary genre, but unless people copy the text or very specific elements of my work, they can do copycats all they like. With patents, a whole class of technologies is often monopolized.
Copyrighted works are also subject to strong novelty effects. While copyright itself lasts for ungodly accounts of time, the vast, vast majority of works will stop producing relevant income in just a couple of years, if that, while a patented invention doesn't usually suffer from those problems.
Not really; time is hardly the only factor you should take into account.
Firstly, copyright is limited to a specific work, while patents are usually more generic - I can invent a whole new literary genre, but unless people copy the text or very specific elements of my work, they can do copycats all they like. With patents, a whole class of technologies is often monopolized.
Copyrighted works are also subject to strong novelty effects. While copyright itself lasts for ungodly accounts of time, the vast, vast majority of works will stop producing relevant income in just a couple of years, if that, while a patented invention doesn't usually suffer from those problems.