Access

Feature

Nature Biotechnology 26, 763–766 (1 July 2008) | doi:10.1038/nbt0708-763

How many patents does a biopharmaceutical company need?

Deepak Kumar Parida , Ritu Mehdiratta & Gayatri Saberwal

Biotech companies are a paradox: they attract funding and may be traded on the stock market without necessarily having strong revenue streams. As businesses go, this is unusual and is often understood as arising from the need for many years of research required to bring a biopharmaceutical product to market.