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I see what you mean, but there’s no need to republish each time a renewal fee is paid – in many other countries that would be every year.

What we are talking about is the maximum term of the patent, assuming all renewals are paid.

In actual practice, patents are handled in a triaged manner.  The due diligence proceeds by iterations of increasingly detailed analyses to test relevance to the task at hand. 

Patent term is one of the simple ways to test relevance – you won’t infringe after this date.  In practice, companies handling large freedom to operate due diligences will proceed from simple analyses such as term and family members, through literal claim scope, non-literal claim scope (DOE in the US, etc), validity, and so on.

Thanks for comment on my blog. And you are right, it is the easy way out for patent offices.

My only point is that in almost every single case, even if an expected maximum life date is published on the cover, one will still need to check the file history to see if it is abandoned or not.

A newly issued patent in the US will expire 3.5 years after grant if the maintenance fees are not paid. The only way to check is in the file history. 

Even if the office publishes future 3.5, 7.5, 11.5 year dates and the legal maximum date and keeps track of any extensions due to drug approvals, it still can only tell me when the case is going to expire in one instance – only when in that window between 11.5 years and the legal maximum. Even then that assumes the Office would republish each application when it went abandoned to let the community know that it had not been renewed.

If a company is making investment decisions based on when a patent expires, they should likely be checking the file histories anyway. In the end, the work to keep track of and republish all of those patents, probably outweighs the societial benefit.