It would be more apt to address it as if you spent money researching how to cheaply mass produce houses. The copyright on that production method should be around long enough to cover the cost sunk in research + some profit. What should happen next is that the patent expires and the method goes into public domain so that others now can build off your work. The issue with continuous extensions of copyright is that it prevents others from improving on the work. This can lead to stagnation in innovation.

Patents were such an important concept that it is written into the U.S Constitution. This, however, was at a time when the average rate of adoption of new technology was 30 years. Technology advances so quickly today that waiting 30, 50, 70+ years for a patent to be released to public domain means that by the time others can work on it, the research is so dated that there isn't any point.

There is also the issue of over-generalized patents.

Example:

Method and system for identifying and obtaining computer software from a remote computer

This patent doesn't cover a specific source or implementation of updating a program but the very concept of an "update". This was issued in 1995. Imagine if this was actively enforced? Every software company would need to pay the fee any time they needed to patch their software. Innovation would be restricted to only those with enough capital to pay the toll. Companies like Google could have never become as strong as they are today.

I wish that patents had a dollar value attached (adjusted by inflation annually) that would cover the cost of research + profit. Licenses to the patented work would pay down that cost and when it hit 0, the patent would be released to the public domain. This covers the initial protections that patents were intended to provide while also scaling to the increasing rate of technological advancement. The faster the technology is adopted, the more quickly its patent is payed down and the sooner others could start working off it.