ABSTRACT
The importance of pharmaceutical patents has increased with the dramatic growth of the generic pharmaceutical industry in the United States and the resulting competition between the research-based pharmaceutical industry and the generic pharmaceutical industry. Pharmaceutical companies spend billions of dollars on research and development programs each year in an effort to discover and develop innovative new medicines. As such, protection of these novel drugs and new technology developed during the research process from outside competitors is of paramount importance. An area of great importance to the pharmaceutical industry in particular relates to the patentability of natural products for use in treating disease. The last several decades have witnessed a dramatic increase in the search for compounds from natural sources, such as plants, for the treatment of human disease. Another area of importance in terms of patenting methods of making relates to novel methods developed for the synthesis of chemical or biological target molecules.
