MADISON, WI USA (July 3, 2023) Porta Sophia filed a third party observation with the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) today for the international patent application PCT/US2022/026921 entitled “Psychedelics for Treatment of Pain”, which is currently assigned to Mind Medicine Inc. The submission consisted of eight prior art documents that are material to the patentability of all seven 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.
Patent application: method of treating pain using psychedelics
The PCT application was filed on April 9, 2022 and claims priority to a U.S. provisional application filed on May 3, 2021. It describes a method of treating multiple types of pain with a variety of psychedelics, including LSD, psilocybin, 5-MeO-DMT, and more. Previously, Porta Sophia filed a third-party submission on the aforementioned U.S. application.
Prior art in the third party observation included publications from peer reviewed journals and international patent documents. This prior art anticipates claims lacking novelty in the ‘921 application. A full claims chart and corresponding prior art is available here.
Third party submissions of prior art
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.
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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.