Legal analysis: According to China's patent law and related laws, the intellectual property rights of drugs are generally manifested as drug patents, also known as drug patents, which refer to patents applied for drugs, including drug product patents, drug preparation technology patents, drug use patents and other different types of patents. There are four main forms of medical patents: pharmaceutical compounds, compound preparations of western medicine, prescriptions of traditional Chinese medicine and effective components of traditional Chinese medicine. The invention patent of drug use refers to the patent that is applied for and granted to the use itself when a new unknown use of a known drug is discovered.
Legal basis: There are three types of drug patents in Article 2 of the Patent Law of People's Republic of China (PRC): (1) invention patents; (2) Patent for utility model; (3) Design patent. Among the drug patents, the latter two patents have low technical content and a small number. There are three kinds of pharmaceutical invention patents: product patents, method patents and use patents.