The entirety of this article was included in the fourth amended petition in the Church of the Sacred Synthesis in its defamation lawsuit against Usona/Promega in District Court in Travis County located in Austin Texas.

Bill Linton is the CEO of the Promega corporation.  Bill Linton is the Executive Director of Usona a so-called Public Benefit Corporation (PBC), incorporated as a non-profit.  The majority of donations made to Usona come directly from Bill Linton.  Usona is headquartered on the Promega corporation property.

“Bill Linton [CEO of Usona and founder of billion-dollar biotech company Promega] is mostly funding the work of Usona. They have other donors but most of the money is coming from Bill. He’s got the resources to do that and it’s great that he’s doing that.”  Rick Doblin, founder of MAPS

Psychedelic Times: Let’s Talk About Compass And Psychedelic Capitalism: Interview with Rick Doblin

Bill Linton and Promega were sued by minority shareholders for attempting to illegally divert control and shares from Promega to Usona and settled the lawsuit for over $300 million dollars.

“Prior to the filing of the lawsuit in 2014, it looked like Promega was on its way to becoming a publicly-traded company until Linton announced his plan to celebrate the company’s centennial as a privately owned company [his so-called 100 year plan.]

A couple years later, longtime shareholders of the company, sued both Promega and Linton, alleging Linton had used threats, lies, and manipulation to gain majority control of the company. The lawsuit further alleged Linton was aiming to transfer his controlling shares of the company to Usona Institute, a research institute found by Linton.”

Promega Settles Lawsuit with Minority Shareholders

Promega’s patent strategy to keep other company’s patents (bad patents) that are similar to theirs (good patents) away from theirs (good patents) is through prior art sites like Porta Sophia and Freedom to Operate.  Porta Sophia and Freedom to Operate are non-profits that Promega uses to invalidate bad patents to protect their good patents. 

A prime example of this devilishly clever patent strategy is their drug candidate 5-Methyl-Psilocbyin which is 4-PO-5-Me-DMT a study of which was submitted to a peer-reviewed journal in the article Chemoenzymatic Synthesis of 5-Methylpsilocybin: A Tryptamine with Potential Psychedelic Activity with the primary author being Usona employee Alexander Sherwood published on March 5, 2021 a year prior to Alexander Sherwood’s Usona article Fungi Fiction.

https://www.usonainstitute.org/publications/chemoenzymatic-synthesis-of-5-methylpsilocybin-a-tryptamine-with-potential-psychedelic-activity

“A novel analogue of psilocybin was produced by hybrid chemoenzymatic synthesis in sufficient quantity to enable bioassay. Utilizing purified 4-hydroxytryptamine kinase from Psilocybe cubensis, chemically synthesized 5-methylpsilocin was enzymatically phosphorylated to provide 5-methylpsilocybin.”

“The zwitterionic product was isolated from the enzymatic step with high purity utilizing a solvent–antisolvent precipitation approach. Subsequently 5-Methylpsilocbyin was tested for psychedelic-like activity using the mouse head-twitch response assay, which indicated activity that was more potent than the psychedelic dimethyltryptamine, but less potent than that of psilocybin.”

What Usona accomplished in layman’s terms is to feed laboratory synthesized 5-Me-DMT to the PsiH and PsiK enzymes that they extracted from Psilocbye Cubensis mushroom fruiting bodies grown on a substrate.  By combining the PsiH enzyme with 5-Me-DMT they were able to make 4-HO-5-Me-DMT and then by combining the PsiK enzyme they were able to turn 4-HO-5-Me-DMT in to 4-PO-5-Me-DMT aka 5-Methyl-Psilocbyin.

Comparatively speaking, the Church of the Sacred Synthesis makes Psilomethoxin (4-HO-5-MeO-DMT and Psilomethoxcybin (4-PO-5-MeO-DMT) by feeding laboratory synthesized 5-MeO-DMT from melatonin or mexamine to Psilocbye Cubensis mushroom substrate in the form of holy water that the substrate drinks to create our sacrament.  The 5-MeO-DMT combines with the PsiH enzyme in the mushroom mycelium to create 4-HO-5-MeO-DMT (Psilomethoxin) and the 4-HO-5-MeO-DMT then combines with the PsiK enzyme to make 4-HO-5-Meo-DMT (Psilomethoxcybin).

Usona’s 5-Methylpsilocbyin is a pro-drug that breaks down in vivo in rat and human into the active ingredient 5-Methylpsilocin which is 4-HO-5-Me-DMT.  Psilomethoxin is 4-HO-5-MeO-DMT.   The difference between psilomethoxin and the active ingredient in Promega’s 5-Methylpsilocbyin is only one Oxygen atom different. 

Bill Linton paid Usona to create a prior art article called Fungi Fiction to protect 5-Methylpsilocbyin and 5-Methylpsilocin from similar patents that could be filed on one atom different substances like Psilomethoxin and Psilomethoxcybin.   

This prior art publishing is a form of patent invalidation that doesn’t risk Promega being sued in counterclaims for patent infringement in the case they directly sued a company or entity that created psilomethoxin and psilomethoxcbyin since they could be countersued for infringement and risk their patent being invalidated and their entire company being sued for damages. 

Instead Promega has their non-profit public benefit company Usona and their partners Porta Sophia and Freedom to Operate to do their patent invalidation dirty work preserving Promega’s private financial interests.