Patents of bio-active compounds based on computer-aided drug discovery techniques.

In recent times, there has been an increased use of Computer-Aided Drug Discovery (CADD) techniques in Medicinal Chemistry as auxiliary tools in drug discovery. Whilst the ultimate goal of Medicinal Chemistry research is for the discovery of new drug candidates, a secondary yet important outcome that results is in the creation of new computational tools. This process is often accompanied by a lack of understanding of the legal aspects related to software and model use, that is, the copyright protection of new medicinal chemistry software and software-mediated discovered products. In the center of picture, which lies in the frontiers of legal, chemistry, and biosciences, we found computational modeling-based drug discovery patents. This article aims to review prominent cases of patents of bio-active organic compounds that involved/protect also computational techniques. We put special emphasis on patents based on Quantitative Structure-Activity Relationships (QSAR) models but we include other techniques too. An overview of relevant international issues on drug patenting is also presented.