Comment by ars
Intellectual property does not belong to you. The entire concept of "owning" intellectual property is a very recent thing.
So how about we go back to how it used to be and just remove this entire concept.
You can own things you can't own an idea.
Your copyrighted work just has to be an original expression, not derived from someone else's work. It doesn't have to contain original ideas.
Patents are for ideas. Patents do in fact expire far faster than copyrights in the USA. The main problem with patents is patent trolling in the area of software patents.