Patents are a very broad instrument, and their practical length can be either quite short or crushingly large depending on which industry we are talking about. when your time to market from patent to actual use in the field can be measured in minutes, and first mover advantage leads to a patent locking an industry down, then sure, the current system is too much. But there are fields where the distance between patent and first use in industry can be 8-10 years, and no product gains wide adoption in the first couple of years, so the practical time of patent exploitation is a whole lot shorter.

It's just unfortunate that more nuance legislation will get us people playing games to define inventions as the most protected thing possible, whether they really deserve it or not.