5 ms·

There are composition of matter patents that allow you to patent a novel molecule: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Composition_of_matter https://en.wikipedia.org/

• logfromblammo 10y ago
  That's perfectly in line with patenting inventions, but not discoveries, and implementations, but not ideas. So in order for me to accept a patent on a molecule, it would have to be found nowhere else in nature or in prior art, and the applicant must have synthesized a measurable quantity of it. In practice, this means patentable molecules have to be rather complex, because there are a ridiculous number of compounds that have been created once, for someone's dissertation, or to create catalog entries for boiling points, freezing points, dissociation constants, and such, and then never looked at again. Quite a lot of "new" drugs were actually first described decades ago and then shelved. There are just too many possibilities in organic chemistry to examine each in detail without a specific application already in mind.