MADISON, WI USA (January 23, 2023) Porta Sophia filed a third party observation with the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) today for International Patent Application Number PCT/IB2022/051486 entitled “Effects of mescaline and of mescaline analogs (scalines) to assist psychotherapy,” assigned to Universitätsspital Basel. The submission consisted of 14 prior art documents that are material to the patentability of all 16 claims of the application.
Concurrently, Porta Sophia filed a third-party preissuance submission with the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) on January 20, 2023 for U.S. Pat. App. Ser. No. 17/883,502 assigned to Universitätsspital Basel with similar claims. Press release for the third-party preissuance submission can be found here.
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 Universitätsspital Basel application was filed on February 19, 2022, and claims priority to a US provisional application filed on February 24, 2021. It describes a method of administering mescaline and/or mescaline analogs such as scalines to treat a broad range of medical conditions including anxiety disorder, depression, addiction, OCD, PTSD, eating disorder, headache and more. In addition, the application claims a broad dosage range of administering 1-800 mg of mescaline or analogs.
Prior art in the third-party observation included publications from peer reviewed journals, U.S. patent documents and uncommon sources including Erowid (anticipating claims of broad dosage range) and Isomer Design (anticipating claims on mescaline analogs). A full claims and corresponding prior art are available here.
WIPO Patent Cooperation Treaty guidelines allow third parties to submit prior art and concise descriptions of their relevance to the WIPO. 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 tracks and analyzes psychedelic patent applications globally. If an application improperly claims innovation of something known in the public domain and meets the standards of Porta Sophia's third party intervention evaluation criteria, the team assembles evidence against these invalid claims and contests them directly to the relevant patent office through third-party interventions.
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.