United States Patent 4,521,431 "Aminoalkyl Furan Derivative" dated 04 Jun 1985 has an abstract:

A novel crystal form of ranitidine hydrochloride [long organic chemical name], designated form 2, and having favorable filtration and drying characteristics, is characterised by its infra-red spectrum and/or by its x-ray powder diffraction patterns.

This modest sounding invention was the world's top-selling pharmaceutical 10 years later: Zantac, the anti-ulcer pharmaceutical, the subject of a large legal battle (see examples later in this section). Standard pharmaceutical and investment industry wisdom says that when you lose patent protection you lose half your market to generics and must also halve your price to remain competitive (so you lose 75% of turnover). This patent had seven years to run over the previous state of the art, and was grossing over US$ 3,500,000,000 per annum.

So the total value (in terms of turnover) represented by the x-ray powder diffraction pattern used to characterise this patent was 0.75 × 7 × US$ 3,500,000,000 in the USA alone. This is about

or close to US$ 20 billion in round figures, and the world-wide market covered by parallel patents would probably double the value of the intellectual property. From start to finish the discovery of ranitidine hydrochloride will probably have been worth nearly US$ 100,000,000,000 so next time you are asked about XRPD and what it is worth, please bear this in mind!

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