MADISON, WI USA (May 5, 2025) GH Research Ireland Ltd has today received a non-final rejection from the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) for U.S. Pat. App. Ser. No. 18/675,614 entitled “5-Methoxy-N,N-Dimethyltryptamine (5-MeO-DMT) for Treating Depression”. On September 27, 2024, Porta Sophia filed a third-party preissuance submission that challenged the patentability of the application’s claims on the grounds that the claims lack novelty and are obvious to someone skilled in the art.
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 patent examiners, innovators, and the public alike to explore the scope of psychedelic technologies.
Patent application: 5-MeO-DMT to treat depressive disorders
The ’614 application was filed on May 28, 2024, and claims priority to earlier filed applications dating back to February 24, 2020. It describes methods for treating depressive disorders, including major depressive disorder (MDD) and treatment-resistant depression (TRD), using 5-MeO-DMT. The claims cover a range of treatment protocols, administration routes (particularly inhalation), dosing strategies to induce peak psychedelic experiences, rapid symptom relief, and clinical improvements measured through well-established depression scales (MADRS or HAM-D).
In the USPTO’s notice of non-final rejection, all pending claims of the application are rejected on multiple grounds, including lack of novelty and obviousness in view of prior public disclosures. The examiner cited prior art presented in Porta Sophia's third-party preissuance submission as grounds for that action. Specifically mentioned was a publication from Erowid, which was cited as contributing to obviousness rejections of claims concerning therapeutic dosing ranges. The examiner states that “Erowid teaches the dosage of smoked/vaporized 5-MeO-DMT shown as follows:
…it would have been prima facie obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art at the time the application as file to modify the method of treating major depressive disorder as set forth above by incorporating the threshold dosage of 5-MeO-DMT taught by Erowid for the first administration, and the optimize said dosage through routine experimentation...” (p. 31-32 of the Office Action).
This curated reference and all others included in Porta Sophia’s third-party preissuance submission are available in the Porta Sophia psychedelic prior art library. Porta Sophia serves a unique and essential role in protecting the public domain by acting as a bridge between community-based knowledge repositories, such as public forums like Erowid, and USPTO patent examiners who often lack the time to access such non-conventional prior art sources, ensuring this valuable existing knowledge remains accessible and protected from unwarranted privatization.
Third-party submissions of prior art
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 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.
Learn about the status and impact of Porta Sophia's third party submissions and observations.
View Our Summary Chart
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.