I'm not concerned about too much profit. I'm just concerned about stifling competition for too long. Patents feel like crony capitalism in some industries.

After posting I did consider the lone software engineer who comes up with a great idea, creates an app, and his app is then copied by Google who has much better marketing and distribution resources.

If patent duration was a function of investment in R&D, this software developer would be SOL because he invested little into his "eureka" idea.