Abstract
This article is a preview of an analysis, appearing shortly in Current Trends in Pharmaceutical Discovery entitled ‘Patenting of combinatorial chemistry’, which is a detailed analysis of patenting trends in the field of combinatorial chemistry from 1990 - 1998. In less than a decade, combinatorial chemistry has gone from a curiosity, to a subject which is not only attracting huge investment from industry, but which has initiated some fundamental changes in the paradigm of modern chemistry. A data set of 922 relevant patent applications were used in this article, which aims to provide an overview of the subject by detailing levels of patenting, routes of applications, patented subject matter, and of course, the companies at the forefront of the field, their partnerships, and research collaborations.