Psilocybin leads every compound in our patent tracker on combined patent activity — 60 granted, 163 pending, 223 total. Ketamine actually has more grants (71), but most of those trace back to one already-approved drug, Spravato. Psilocybin's total is almost entirely bets on approvals that haven't happened yet. This is a deep dive into who's holding those bets, drawing on the same TREA data behind our patent overview.
Who's Filing
COMPASS Pathways (Nasdaq: CMPS), a London-based public company, holds the most: 13 granted, 21 pending, largely covering its psilocybin drug COMP360 and the specific crystal form — "Polymorph A" — it's formulated from. COMP360 is also the field's furthest-along psilocybin program, having cleared its first Phase 3 primary endpoint for treatment-resistant depression, with an NDA filing targeted for Q4 2026.
Enveric Biosciences (Nasdaq: ENVB), headquartered in Cambridge, MA, holds 12 granted and 18 pending — all psilocybin, none of it for the psilocybin molecule itself. Enveric's patents cover its EVM-301 series, chemically modified psilocybin analogs designed to keep the neuroplasticity effect while dropping the hallucinogenic one. Its lead candidate, EB-003, is still preclinical.
Turtle Bear Holdings, a private LLC, holds 10 granted and 15 pending. The filings trace to mycologist Paul Stamets and cover psilocybin-mushroom-extract compositions — often combined with other fungal compounds like erinacines — for broad claims around neurogenesis and neurological health, not a specific drug candidate moving through FDA trials.
CaaMTech, a private company based in Issaquah, WA, holds 7 granted and 18 pending, the widest compound spread of any private holder (psilocybin, DMT, 5-MeO-DMT, and ibogaine). CaaMTech has filed over 100 applications since 2017, mostly novel psilocybin prodrugs — its lead compound, CT-4201, recently got FDA feedback clearing its blinding strategy for an MDD trial.
Below those four, the filings thin out fast: Universitätsspital Basel (4 granted, 12 pending, the broadest academic compound spread of anyone in the dataset), Zylorion Health (4 granted — all four carrying terminal disclaimers, no public listing found), Psilera and Atai Therapeutics' own psilocybin-specific filings (3 granted each), and Psilo Scientific and Lennham Pharmaceuticals rounding out the granted-patent tail.
What's Missing From the List
Usona Institute, the nonprofit running one of three FDA-vouchered psilocybin programs for major depressive disorder, isn't in this data at all — deliberately. Usona publishes its psilocybin synthesis methods openly and has signed a public commitment not to patent the compound, betting on FDA data exclusivity instead of IP. It's the clearest example of the field's actual split: some companies are racing to lock down composition-of-matter and formulation claims before anyone else can, and at least one major player has decided that's the wrong game to play.
The Fight Over Compass's Patents
Compass's polymorph patents didn't go unchallenged. A nonprofit called Freedom to Operate filed Post-Grant Review petitions arguing the specific psilocybin crystal form Compass patented wasn't actually novel — that it had existed, unpatented, for decades. The Patent Trial and Appeal Board disagreed: it construed Compass's claims narrowly enough that the petitions were denied, and the patents survived. It cost Freedom to Operate close to a million dollars in the process. Compass also carries the heaviest terminal-disclaimer load of any holder in the dataset — 10 of its 13 grants — which ties their real expiration to an earlier sibling patent rather than the standard 20-year term.
The Pattern
Three strategies are visible in the data. COMPASS bet on defending a narrow, contested claim around one specific drug form — and, so far, won that fight. Enveric and CaaMTech are both betting on chemistry around psilocybin rather than psilocybin itself, filing dozens of analog and prodrug applications to build a moat next to a molecule nobody can fully own. Turtle Bear's claims are broader and vaguer, more mushroom-extract composition than drug candidate, and no clinical trial we could find is tied to them. And Usona is betting none of this matters once there's an approved drug and five years of exclusivity attached to it. Nobody's approved yet, so nobody's actually won.
This is business and regulatory reporting, not medical advice. No compound discussed here is FDA-approved for the indications listed.
Sources
- Altitude Intelligence: Psychedelic Patent Tracker
- Altitude: 677 Patents and One FDA Rejection
- COMPASS Pathways Investor Relations
- Freedom to Operate: About Psilocybin
- Psychedelic Spotlight: Compass Pathways Psilocybin Patent Upheld
- Enveric Biosciences: Pipeline
- Enveric Biosciences: Relocates Corporate Headquarters to Cambridge, MA
- CaaMTech: FDA Blesses CaaMTech's Psychedelic Functional Unblinding Strategy
- Usona Institute: Statement on Open Science and Open Praxis
- Psymposia: As COMPASS Pathways Continues Its Attempts to Build a Psychedelic Monopoly, Usona Institute Keeps Publishing Open Research
- Altitude: Trials Tracker