Detailed consideration of ADEV-specific patenting strategies cannot be covered here but two opposing trends play into the publication statistics above. Good quality, data-supported patents are expensive to prepare and maintain, not to mention require substantial experimental chemistry resources (even if contracted out) to generate sufficiently broad SAR exemplifications. While there are no detailed statistics for ADEV operations (partially due to lack of clean tagging) they tend to patent early towards the end of the research phase. This allows both prompt publishing after 18 months and ample time to approach those funders who insist on patent protection (n.b. while this includes some organisations for NTD research badged as "non-profit", in the US this is a tax-based classification). By comparison, larger pharmaceutical companies usually file their novel chemistry claims later in the development cycle thereby maximising patent life and subsequent profits. They also have more resources for follow-up filings to protect back-up compounds, synthetic routes and formulations against the opportunistic filings of generic manufacturers that emerge quickly after risk-reduction is disclosed via positive efficacy data. There is an inherent tension between these two approaches. It should also be noted that ADEV operations may not have sufficient resources for broad and deep IP protection but also if they default on maintenance charges their compounds become non-developable (n.b. the legal status and examination reports of patents are available but non-trivial to check).