Pharmaceutical inventions are considered as strategic for all countries, and the patent granted can play a vital role in the development of the activities of pharmaceutical companies. However, determining what issues can be subject to legal protection has always been a subject a study and investigation. In such a way that inventions related to products, processes, new functions, pharmaceutical discoveries, pharmaceutical processes and compositions, and pharmaceutical formulas are covered by the patent system. In the Patent Law of 1931, despite the wide range of patentable items, pharmaceutical formulas and processes are excluded from the scope of protection, which has led to different analyses in the courts and the issuance of binding precedent 615 of the Supreme Court. The aforementioned provision has not been repeated in the Patent Law of 2016, but scientific discoveries, genetic resources and basically biological processes cannot be registered as inventions either. Therefore, uncertainty concerning the limits of pharmaceutical inventions, considering the diversity of pharmaceutical innovations, has remained and has been a subject for careful examination and reflection, providing a serious motivation for further research in this field. The present article, employing a descriptive analytical method, finally concludes that there are several assumptions about the concept of "pharmaceutical formula and processes", such as the prohibition of registration of patents regarding products and processes, the sorting of pharmaceutical processes and compositions, the prohibition of the registration of discovered drugs and pharmaceutical processes in terms of the chronological order in which medicinal elements are used of which it seems that the assumption of prohibition of patents regarding products, the prohibition of registration of discovered drugs and the sorting of pharmaceutical processes and compositions is stronger. However, according to subsequent changes in Iranian legal system, drugs that have a discovery aspect or are taken from natural genetic sources are prohibited from being registered. In all other cases, there should basically be no prohibition.