MADISON, WI USA (December 14, 2021) Psychedelic drug company CaaMTech Inc. has today canceled all 18 original claims of U.S. Pat. App. Ser. No. 17/095,430 entitled “COMPOSITIONS AND METHODS COMPRISING A COMBINATION OF SEROTONERGIC DRUGS”. On November 18, 2021, Porta Sophia filed a third party preissuance submission that challenged the patentability of the application’s overly broad claims.
Porta Sophia, a non-profit psychedelic prior art library, leverages the experience of legal and interdisciplinary academic scholars to promote an ethical psychedelic patenting landscape that preserves the integrity of the public domain. The organization curates and makes readily available relevant historical documentation for anyone, including patent examiners, to explore the scope of psychedelic technologies.
Porta Sophia also tracks and analyzes psychedelic patent applications. If an application improperly claims innovation of something known in the public domain, the team assembles evidence against these invalid claims and contests them directly to the USPTO through third-party preissuance submissions.
The application, filed on November 11, 2020 and claiming priority to a provisional application filed on February 9, 2017, originally described a combination of serotonergic drugs to address neuropsychiatric disorders. The serotonergic drugs include psilocybin, LSD, MDMA, ibogaine, more than 50 additional psychedelic compounds, and combinations of these drugs with cannabinoids, benzodiazepines, and SSRIs.
Prior art in Porta Sophia’s third-party preissuance submission included publications from peer reviewed journals, U.S. patent documents, books, and evidence published in public online forums that addressed all of the application’s now-cancelled 18 claims, including those describing the use of the well documented combination of lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) and 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA).
Along with canceling their claims, CaaMTech filed a new set of 7 claims that are narrower in scope than the originals. The revised claims are solely focused on the combination of a psilocybin derivative with an SSRI, and no treatment indications are now claimed.
The America Invents Act allows third parties to submit prior art and concise descriptions of their relevance to the USPTO. This ensures that the documents submitted will be considered in the examination of that patent application. In addition, these submissions have a broad impact because applicants have a duty to disclose the prior art submitted against a single patent application for other relevant patent applications filed by the applicant.
Porta Sophia works to support equity in the psychedelic field. The organization facilitates community engagement through encouraging submissions of prior art from the public and organizing an interdisciplinary Archival Researcher Network (ARN) to ensure quality psychedelic prior art is readily available to patent applicants, examiners and those interested in psychedelic research.
To get involved or learn more, visit www.portasophia.org.
Porta Sophia, meaning doorway to wisdom, is a non-profit psychedelic prior art library created to support good patents in the field of psychedelics. Based in Madison, WI USA, Porta Sophia identifies scientific, historical and cultural prior art in common and uncommon spaces and brings it together in one simple search tool for innovators and patent reviewers. The organization’s mission is to protect the public domain, stimulate innovation, and support good patents to assure psychedelic therapies can one day be available at scale to the people who need them. To learn more, visit www.portasophia.org.