one can patent a chemical structure, this covers chemical or pharmaceutical innovations.
It means that only one that holds the patent is allowed to manufacture, market the drug.
period of the patent can vary for different drugs and in different countries, in most patent laws nowadays, the term of patent is 20 years from the filing date of the application.(wikipedia) since patent requests are filled before the drug is ready to market, the actual duration of the patent while the drug is in market can be less than 10 years. after the patent is expired the drug can be manufactured and sold by others, this drugs are called generic drugs.
Although patenting is possible in softwares as well, it is not a common way of protection for this kind of IP. it is because in software world there is a clear way of protecting the algorithm(which is comparable to chemical structure of a chemical) by generating executable binary code from the source code.
licensing on the other hand is not common in pharmaceuticals. a drug is a physical entity and it is hard to change and copy it for an end user(if we try to map the licensing here).
http://www.news-medical.net/health/Drug-Patents-and-Generics.aspx
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemical_patent
http://ec.europa.eu/competition/sectors/pharmaceuticals/inquiry/jacob.pdf
https://www.ffii.org/Frequently%20Asked%20Questions%20about%20software%20patents
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/intellectual-property/
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