united-states intellectual-property patents
Can two unique inventions that do the same thing be patented?
<p>Let's say I get a patent issued for a process/formulation that cures a disease or treats damaged hair.</p>
<p>Can someone else come along and invent something that cures the same disease or repairs hair, but they found a totally different chemical, process, and formulation?</p>
<p>Maybe a better way of asking is: can you patent the result or function of an invention?</p>

<p>Yes - patents are not for results but for devices and processes that can achieve the result.</p>
<p>An airplane and a helicopter can have similar results; more than one medication helps to reduce blood sugar levels.</p>

<p>Yes, certainly.</p>
<p>For example, <a href="https://americanhistory.si.edu/collections/search/object/nmah_322313" rel="noreferrer">according to the Smithsonian Institution</a>, over four thousand patents have been granted for mousetraps, and another 40 or so are successfully patented every year.</p>

<p>If both inventions work in different ways, but achieve the same thing, they can both be patented. Take a petrol engine, diesel engine, and a Wankel engine.</p>
<p>If your inventions work in the same way, one gets the patent, one gets nothing. Tough luck.</p>

<p>I don't know anything about other fields, but drugs can do <em>extremely</em> similar things by <em>extremely</em> similar means and still all get patented.</p>
<p>For example, there were a lot of patented angiotensin converting enzyme inhibitors (drugs with generic names ending in -pril). There were so many that doctors made jokes about 'another-pril'.</p>
<p>These drugs all</p>
<ul>
<li>prevent heart disease and stroke</li>
<li>by lowering blood pressure</li>
<li>by reducing the formation of angiotensin</li>
<li>by inhibiting angiotensin converting enzyme</li>
<li>by blocking its active site</li>
<li>at least for the first few (and maybe more), by mimicking the shape of the blood-pressure lowering component of <em>Bothrops jararaca</em> venom</li>
</ul>
