Excipients patent protection

Independent use patents offer the weakest patent protection. They almost invite others to seek possibilities to circumvent them and they do not cover the products that result from the invented new use. Wherever the necessary requirements are fulfilled, product patents should be applied for. In the first example given above, it seems hardly justified to construct product claims for (all) products made by the modified fermentation process. The excipient with adjuvant effects could probably be patented as a product patent, claiming "vaccines containing substance X as a novel adjuvant" with the non-obvious advantage of a better tolerability or efficacy over existing adjuvants. As for the third example, any advantageous characteristic of the resulting product may be used to justify a product patent. 

The physical properties of the drag substance and excipients are important in the manufacture, packaging, shipping, and use of drags [1]. These physical properties include solubility, dissolution rate, stability, particle size, water absorption, compactibility, and others. The crystalline form of the solid affects each of these properties. The physical form (i.e. polymorphism) of the drag substance can even affect the bioavailability of the drag and its effectiveness as a medicine [2]. Different solid-state forms of a chemical can be patented, thereby protecting the intellectual property of the pharmaceutical company, which can have a... 

---