Research Guides: Patents and Designs: Pharmaceuticals

Recommended Books

Pharmaceutical Patents

Many drugs, medicines, and biologically active chemical compounds have been patented. The American Chemical Society estimates that more than half of all new chemical substances are disclosed first in patent applications. Here are some resources for locating patents that cover specific drugs and medicines.

Drug Patent Register
Health Canada's alphabetical listing of medicines and their associated patents, patent expiry dates and other related information. Search by active ingredient, brand name, Drug Information Number (DIN) and patent number.
FDA Orange Book: Approved Drug Products with Therapeutic Equivalence Evaluations
The Orange Book, which is maintained by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, covers prescription drug products, over-the-counter drugs and discontinued drugs. Search by active ingredient, brand name, owner and patent number.
FDA Purple Book: Database of Licensed Biological Products
The FDA Purple Book is a searchable database containing public information on approved biological products, including biosimilar and interchangeable products, and their reference products.
International Nonproprietary Names (INN)
The World Health Organization (WHO) maintains a registry of non-proprietary (generic) names of medicines and pharmaceuticals.
Licensed Natural Health Products Database
This database is maintained by Health Canada and contains information about licensed natural health products such as herb and plant-based remedies, vitamins and minerals, traditional medicines, and more.
MedsPaL
The MedsPaL database provides information on the patent and licensing status of selected HIV, hepatitis C, tuberculosis and other patented essential medicines in low- and middle-income countries. It is supported by the Medicines Patent Pool (MPP), a UN-backed public health organization.
Merck Index, 14th ed. (2006)
Covers 10,000 chemicals, drugs and biologicals. Literature references include key patents. Bracken Library Reference Collection, call number QV772 .M555 2013.
Pat-INFORMED
This WIPO database provides access to patent information related to drugs and medicines.

Guides

How to Conduct Patent Searches for Medicines: A Step-by-Step Guide (WHO, 2010)

Related Databases and Search Engines

EMBASE
Medical database covering a wide range of journals in the biomedical sciences. Particularly useful for locating drug information, as it indexes many drug journals not covered by MEDLINE.
SciFinder
SciFinder-n provides access to more than 100 years of chemistry and related science information through the combined coverage of Chemical Abstracts and MEDLINE.
SureChemBL
SureChemBL is a public chemical patent database maintained by the European Bioinformatics Institute (EBI). It indexes chemical structures from full-text EP, JP, US and WO patent documents; bibliographic data from more than 90 countries is also searchable.
ChemSpider
ChemSpider is a free chemical database providing access to over 34 million structures from hundreds of data sources including Google Patents.