Porta Sophia Files Third-Party Preissuance Submission against DMT Vape U.S. Patent Application 17/555,763

MADISON, WI USA (June 12, 2024) 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. 17/555,763 entitled “Delivery System For Ayahuasca-Like Substances”, which is currently assigned to Gregory Ellis. The submission consisted of 7 prior art documents that are material to the patentability of 21 of 22 total 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 applications: vape pen to administer DMT and other psychedelics

The ’763 application was filed December 20, 2021 and claims priority to several documents, the earliest of which is a U.S. provisional application filed on July 29, 2019. This application claims methods for delivering an “ayahuasca-like” substance (including one or more of DMT, 5-MeO-DMT, an MAOI, and 2-CB) via a vaporizer device similar to a vape pen or an e-cigarette.

This application is a child family member application of previously granted U.S. patent 11,235,110 which claims a vaporizing device to deliver these same compounds. This parent document, which granted in early 2022, drew criticism from the psychedelic field due to the prevalence of many pieces of prior art establishing similar devices to effectively administer DMT. Given that much of this relevant prior art was not surfaced in the examination of the ‘110 patent document, Porta Sophia determined intervention was necessary – submitting prior art that further established that the claims of this application lacked novelty and were obvious to someone skilled in the art. This is particularly important because the claims of the ’763 application are broader than the granted ‘110 patent, and therefore they pose an even more significant threat to the public domain if granted.

Prior art in this third-party preissuance submission included domestic and international patent documents, blog posts, news articles, and offers of sale. This prior art anticipates claims in the ’763 application. The full third-party submission documentation is available here.

Third-party submissions of prior art

United States patent law 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.