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Indiana Law Journal

Document Type

Note

Publication Date

Winter 2023

Publication Citation

99 Indiana Law Journal 391 (2023)

Abstract

For the first time since the War on Drugs began in the 1970s, researchers have returned to the promise of psychedelic drugs for treating the growing mental health crisis in the United States. As research into psychedelic drugs as a conventional treatment method for mental health conditions grows, so does the number of filings at the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office for psychedelic-related patents. But the decades-long lapse in the development of psychedelic drugs creates the risk that low-quality psychedelic patents will issue, giving limited monopolies to companies that have not truly innovated in the psychedelic space. In this Note, I discuss two psychedelic drugs at the forefront of current research, examine the importance of patents in the psychedelic field, and introduce the “prior art problem” resulting from the lack of psychedelic prior art. To combat this problem, I then propose the creation of a database comprised of recreational psychedelic information, incentivized through government subsidies and immunity from prosecution.

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