Big Pharma and Monopoly Capitalism: A Long-Term View

•Construction of a digitalised dataset containing all drugs approved in the orange book by the food and drug administration since 1985 to 2020.•Pharmaceutical patents appear to be increasingly oriented to secure appropriability conditions.•Strong skewness in patent applications trade names and increasing patent thickness over time.•Decreasing ratio of orange book patents receiving public support.•Firm-level strong correlation between patent portfolio and profitability.