ABSTRACT
This chapter deals withnanotechnology-based nanopharmaceutical products and their patents. Nanotechnology is the novel technology that is highly interdisciplinary and applicationoriented in nature. The research related to this technology is in the initial stage. This technology has many ideas and approaches to produce nanopharmaceutical products as well as technologies to solve the problems arising in the pharmaceutical industry. Nanopharmaceutical products are produced by utilizing nanotechnology for medicinal and pharmaceutical applications. These products contain nanomaterials with a size range of 1 to 100 nm as well as particles within the size range of 100 to 1000 nm. Due to the involvement of nanotechnology, they have different or altered pharmaceutical characteristics compared to their source or basic pharmaceutical contents. They have advantages like target specificity, controlled release of drugs, and enhancement of drug carriers. The different or altered pharmaceutical characteristics lead to new inventions and innovative products. Such intellectual propertycan be protected through patents. Due to the emerging stage of this technology, some issues and challenges are arising during patent filing. As an example, issues like the overlapping of patents arise because of the interdisciplinary nature of nanotechnology. This work has reviewed those issues and challenges as well as the related solutions. Some nanotechnology-based pharmaceutical products such as nanocarriers, pegylated proteins, nanocrystals, protein-drug nanoconjugates, surfactant-based nanodrugs, and nanoformulations based on metals/polymers have already been patented and marketed.
