Wednesday, March 23rd, 2022 from 12:00-1:30pm PST

Prior art is the single most important resource for invalidating bad patents and ensuring that only high-quality patents are granted. Prior art generally refers to all of the knowledge known to the public prior to the date that an inventor claims to have invented her invention. Patent laws define the specific form that such knowledge must take in order to qualify as prior art, considering things such as where and when the knowledge was made publicly available, and whether the knowledge was reduced to writing. In this forum, Dr. Lucas Richert, Dr. David Casimir, and Amanda Pratt (Ph.D. cand.) will discuss the prior art library Porta Sophia, which is designed to help researchers, inventors, and patent offices quickly and easily find and review prior art in the field of psychedelics. Come learn about how to get involved with Porta Sophia and how to help improve the health of the psychedelics market by ensuring that prior art stops bad patents before they ever issue.📷Lucas Richert is an Associate Professor at UW-Madison, where he holds the Urdang Chair in Pharmacy History. He is the author of three monographs and, more recently, he co-edited Cannabis: Global Histories (The MIT Press, 2021), which provided a wide-ranging geographical, temporal, and thematic view of cannabis as both intoxicant and therapeutic substance. Richert also serves as the Historical Director at the American Institute of the History of Pharmacy.📷David Casimir is a patent attorney with a Ph.D. in biochemistry. David is a co-founder of the patent law firm Casimir Jones that focuses on technologies in the life sciences fields. David also co-founded Porta Sophia, a non-profit organization who’s goal 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.📷Amanda Rose Pratt is a PhD candidate in English with a concentration in Composition and Rhetoric and a minor in Science and Technology Studies who researches psychedelic rhetoric at the University of Wisconsin – Madison. As Data Archivist at the psychedelic prior art library Porta Sophia, she works to integrate archival research into their prior art library, in part by engaging with a network of archival researchers who study psychedelics. Amanda is also a founding member of an Interdisciplinary Psychedelic Activism and Environmental Research Working Group sponsored by the UW Center for Culture, History, and Environment (CHE); an advisory member of UW’s Transdisciplinary Center for Research in Psychoactive Substances; and a member of the Madison Psychedelic Society community group.This talk will be recorded and immediately available for rewatch for all attendees.Do you love Chacruna? Want free entry to events, access to our online member community and exclusive events, free merchandise, and much more! Become a member!Scholarships Available – apply here.

How Prior Art Ensures a More Equitable Psychedelic Patent Landscape