Porta Sophia Files Third Party Submissions for Turtle Bear Holdings Applications 18/531,052 and 18/531,407

MADISON, WI USA (May 3, 2024) Porta Sophia filed third-party preissuance submissions with the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) today for two U.S. patent applications, U.S. Pat. App. Ser. No. 18/531,052 and 18/531,407, both entitled “TRYPTAMINE COMPOSITIONS FOR ENHANCING NEURITE OUTGROWTH”, which are currently assigned to Turtle Bear Holdings. The submissions consisted of 6 prior art documents that are material to the patentability of all 15 active claims of each 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: microdosing psilocybin

The ’052 and ‘407 applications were both filed on December 6, 2023 and claim priority to a provisional application filed on July 23, 2016. They both claim compositions for microdosing psilocybin at a range of 1mg to 10mg one to six times per day. The applications also claim using these compositions to treat or ameliorate symptoms of various disorders, including depression, anxiety, obsessive compulsive disorder, and post-traumatic stress disorder.

These documents are both child family member applications of previously granted U.S. patent 11,896,587 which claims the use of 1mg to 10mg of psilocybin taken one to six times per day to treat or ameliorate the symptoms of numerous neuropsychiatric disorders. This patent is a significant threat to the field of psychedelic research and innovation because, given how broadly the claims are worded, the claims allow the applicant to have significant control over low dose psilocybin administration – which has been established in the public domain for decades. The claims of the ’052 and ‘407 applications are even broader than the granted ‘587 patent, and therefore also pose a significant threat to the public domain if granted.

At the time of these submissions of prior art, both applications already received office actions relating to the patentability of the claims, and rejections made in those actions utilized the same prior art references used in the examination of the ‘587 patent. The rejections made in the ’052 and ‘407 office actions relating to novelty and obviousness were successfully overturned by the applicant. Therefore, Porta Sophia determined intervention was necessary – submitting prior art that further established that the claims of both applications lacked novelty and were obvious to someone skilled in the art.

Prior art in these third-party preissuance submission included publications from peer reviewed journals, international patent documents, blog posts, and news articles. This prior art anticipates claims in the ’052 and ‘407 applications. 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.