>>11435027I'm starting to think most new drugs are just slight modifications of existing drugs.
You see the same game being played in the recreational designer drug scene.
They know what the active part of the molecule is and just modify the inactive part to the point that it isn't something not covered by existing laws.
There is a trend of extended release drugs that you only have to take once a day instead of twice but the functional part is exactly the same as existing drugs.
There is also the trend of making a medicine whose sole purpose is to treat the side-effects of some common medicine. This can be a few layers deep. There could be a third medicine designed to treat the side-effects of the second which was designed to treat the side-effects of the first.
Another fun trend is taking drugs that are out of patent and combining them in a patent-able proportion. This is usually done with these chains of side-effect treatments.
There is a law on the books that gives the legal system the right to judge whether one drug is too similar to something on the books. I wish it was applied to these pharmaceutical patent trolls.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Analogue_Act 
