What are your thoughts on the below? Am I correct in my understanding?

Since stronger protection for intellectual property is likely to increase the production of useful information, the lives of patents should be increased beyond their current 20-year length.

I disagree. Patents are employed for a number of reasons and exist for a finite period of time, at present 20 years. The 20-year life span recognizes the tradeoff between the necessity for creating incentives to create/innovate and the public good aspect of information (i.e., we would like to have it in the public domain)

If the sole goal of the exercise is the increase the production of useful information the barriers of entry to new ideas have to be lowered. One important feature of the patent system is that the essential features of the technology being patented must be revealed to the public at the time of approving of the patent. This means that others (i.e., competitions) can access the technology to better understand how to build on it and grow to produce even more useful technologies and innovations. If we extend the period of the patent from 20 years to some number greater than, we would actually be delaying the introduction of the new technology/innovation to market, which builds on the existing patent, by the same length of time. The limited life of patents are meant to balance the social recognition of the tradeoff between the need to provide incentives for creation and the social gains from allowing the information to enter the public domain sooner, allowing for patents to extend beyond 20 years would defer that innovation further.