Compelling clinical work showed that long-outlawed drugs such as LSD, and psilocybin have terrific potential for treating everything from addiction to Alzheimer’s. Pharmaceutical companies have taken note.
Compass started off as a nonprofit in 2015 but switched, just a year later, to a for-profit model and accepted funding from, among others, controversial venture capitalist. In December 2019, Compass received a patent for a method of synthesizing psilocybin. To some competitors, the patent seemed to give the company a monopoly on a compound that humans have used for thousands of years.
Compass has also applied to patent protocols for conducting psychedelic therapy, including conventions that have arguably been part of psychedelic therapy for decades, if not longer, such as soft furniture and “reassuring physical contact.” As one critic put it to me, Compass was trying to patent hugging.
A consortium of chemists and competitors recently challenged Compass’ claims in a patent review trial. Some in the industry maintain that the company’s method of synthesizing psilocybin apes techniques devised by LSD pioneer Hofmann, who filed patents on manufacturing psilocybin over half a century ago. The charge was spearheaded by Carey Turnbull, a former energy broker who founded a nonprofit watchdog group, Freedom to Operate, to fight psychedelic patent claims.
Turnbull is also the founder and CEO of Ceruvia Life Sciences, a for-profit company that’s pursuing pharmaceutical applications of psilocybin and other psychedelics. In other words, in addition to playing the role of psychedelia’s patent overreach patrol, Turnbull is Compass’ direct competitor.on Freedom to Operate’s website, Turnbull claims Compass is “not making good-faith use of capitalism or pharma regulations” by attempting to establish itself as an exclusive, global supplier of psilocybin.
Compass executives, naturally, disagree. They maintain that their patents are in place to protect their legitimate intellectual property, enabling them to bring their treatments to the greatest number of patients possible. They also insist that they aren’t claiming some monopoly on psilocybin—only the process for producing a particular synthetic form. In June, the Patent Trial and Appeal Board sided with Compass, ruling against Freedom to Operate’s challenge.
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