MADISON, WI USA (November 23, 2022) Porta Sophia filed a third-party preissuance submission with the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) today for U.S. Pat. App. Ser. No. 17/713,155 entitled “Pharmaceutical Compositions And Methods For Treating Mental Health Disorders And Promoting Neural Plasticity”, inventor Shawn Joseph. The submission consisted of 10 prior art documents that are material to the patentability of all 20 claims of the application.
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 relevant historical documentation readily available for anyone wanting to explore the scope of psychedelic technologies, including patent examiners.
The '115 application was filed on April 4, 2022, and claims priority to six provisional applications filed from April 3, 2021 to November 10, 2021. It describes the composition of a serotonergic psychedelic compound with a ketamine compound for treating brain disorders including depression and promoting neural plasticity. The psychedelic compound may be a tryptamine, psilocybin, psilocin, lysergamide, and more. In addition, the application also includes a broad dosage range and dose regimen.
Prior art in the third-party preissuance submission included publications from peer reviewed journals and U.S. patent documents. This prior art anticipates claims lacking novelty in the '115 application. A full claims chart and corresponding prior art is available here.
The America Invents Act allows third parties to submit prior art and concise descriptions of their relevance to the USPTO. Documents submitted may 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 also tracks and analyzes patent applications. If an application improperly claims something known to be in the public domain and meets all the standards of Porta Sophia's third party pre-issuance submission evaluation criteria, the team assembles prior art relevant to evaluating the novelty and non-obviousness of the application and presents these directly to the USPTO through third-party preissuance submissions.
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, Wisconsin 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.
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 learn more about Porta Sophia's patent and prior art workflow or get involved, visit www.portasophia.org.