MADISON, WI USA (January 30, 2023) Porta Sophia has responded to the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) request to provide public input to facilitate broader dissemination of public knowledge and promote innovation.
The USPTO released a Request for Comments seeking public input on bolstering the robustness and reliability of patents. The request for comments was published in the Federal Register on October 4, 2022. According to the Request, “[t]hese initiatives are meant to ensure that the patent rights granted by the USPTO fulfill their intended purpose of furthering the common good, incentivizing innovation, and promoting economic prosperity.”
Identify any specific sources of prior art not currently available through the Patents End-to-End Search system that you believe examiners should be searching. How should the USPTO facilitate an applicant's submission of prior art that is not accessible in the Patents End-to-End Search system (e.g., “on sale” or prior public use)?
Revisit procedures for third-party input. The USPTO is considering revising its procedures for allowing third-party input during prosecution. The USPTO currently has a procedure to allow third-party submissions of prior art in applications under examination. This procedure is not widely used. The USPTO will seek public input on whether aspects of the current procedure could be changed to make it more useful.
In its comments, Porta Sophia discussed its free curated prior art library and search tool available at Porta Sophia | Search Library, which provides to examiners critical sources of prior art that are not currently available through the Patents End-to-End system. The database features curated prior art relevant to greater than fifty psychedelic compounds from niche third party resources, archival material, books, catalogues, rare and extinct journals, and relevant conventional prior art in the form of patents, patent applications, and peer-reviewed publications.
Further, Porta Sophia provided suggestions to the USPTO relating to improving the third-party preissuance submission process. Porta Sophia is a frequent user of the third-party preissuance process and to date has filed 18 third-party preissuance submissions with the USPTO since November 2021. Notably, non-traditional prior art submitted by Porta Sophia in a third-party preissuance submission has been used by the Patent Office to reject pending patent claims.
View the Full Request for Comments Documentation
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 support the potential for psychedelic therapies to 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.