Porta Sophia Files Third-Party Preissuance Submission for Turtle Bear Holdings U.S. Patent Application

Psychedelic prior art library presents five documents challenging patentability of all claims

MADISON, WI USA (December 15, 2022) 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. 17/669,845 entitled “Psilocybin Compositions” submitted by Applicant Turtle Bear Holdings (inventor Paul Edward Stamets). The submission consisted of five prior art documents that anticipated all 22 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 readily available relevant historical documentation for patent examiners and the public to explore the scope of psychedelic technologies.

Patent application: Combination of a serotonergic psychedelic and ketamine to treat brain disorders

The '845 application was filed on February 11, 2022, and claims priority to a provisional application filed on July 23, 2016. It describes the allegedly nootropic composition of psilocybin, psilocin, baeocystin, norbaeocystin or DMT in combination with lion's mane mushroom (Hericium erinaceus) extract and niacin.

Prior art in the third-party preissuance submission included publications from peer reviewed journals and U.S. patent documents. This prior art anticipates claims in the '845 application. A full claims chart and corresponding prior art are available here.

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.

About Porta Sophia

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.