The USPTO has rejected Miraculix’s patent application, yet Miraculix is still threatening to sue Emanuel and Matt. Read Emanuel’s analysis.

A German corporation, LeadiX GmbH (operating as “Miraculix”), is attempting to patent basic quantitative test kits for nearly all classes of drugs, including opioids, based on colorimetric methods that have been in the scientific literature for nearly a century. They have sent a cease and desist letter to HRDS LLC (d.b.a. PurityTestKits.com), a project by DanceSafe founder Emanuel Sferios and harm reduction activist Matthew Aragón, demanding that they stop distributing their overdose prevention kits, and threatening to sue them.

This is the official campaign page in support of HRDS, Emanuel and Matt. Bookmark this page to follow the course of events just now beginning to unfold (or signup to the campaign newsletter below). We will be updating this page regularly with more information, including all relevant documentation relating to the matter. Also view our recommended action items below that you can take right now to support this effort.

Read the June 18th press release issued by Integration Communications on behalf of HRDS summarizing the matter (also online) and including quotes from Emanuel, Matt and Jared Skolnick, founding board member of Grassroots Harm Reduction.

Read the June 11th cease and desist letter Miraculix sent to HRDS demanding payment of 50,000 Euros (about $57,000 US dollars) and threatening to sue them in Germany based on the claim that they sell their kits there and are therefore in competition with them.

Read the June 18th response to the C&D from HRDS’s attorney rebutting every claim made by Miraculix and pointing out that HRDS has never sold kits in Germany because products containing sulfuric acid are illegal in the European Union.

Read the original NDA Emanuel signed in 2022 that Miraculix claims he violated, despite the fact that no confidential information pertaining to the kits in question was ever provided to him.

Read Emanuel’s summary of the situation, including what the NDA really entailed, why he began working with Miraculix to begin with, and why he eventually left to start PurityTestKits.com.

Read Leadix GmbH’s patent application (also online) claiming ownership over basic quantitative substance analysis first described nearly 100 years ago and subsequently in dozens of research papers.

Read the International Searching Authority’s rejection of LeadiX GmbH’s patent application, finding that its claimed invention lacks novelty and is anticipated by the prior art. (The ISA files preliminary reviews on all patent applications under the Patent Cooperation Treaty.)

View a screenshot of what HRDS believes was Miraculix’s attempt to have them ship test kits containing sulfuric acid to Germany (despite being illegal in the EU) in order to establish German jurisdiction for a lawsuit. Does Miraculix ship their own kits inside the EU?

Read Emanuel’s article, How to Make a Purity Test Kit, where he describes how he and Matt created their kits using publicly available information. Miraculix has demanded in the C&D letter that HRDS take down this article.

Help defend harm reduction and scientific integrity. Support open source access to basic drug checking technology. Demand that Miraculix withdraw their patent application, stop threatening to sue test kit manufacturers, and join the harm reduction community, which has always operated in the spirit of collaboration and cooperation to improve public health and save lives.

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Donate on GoFundMe!

Donate to Emanuel and Matt’s GoFundMe campaign raising money for their legal defense. Miraculix’s strategy appears to be to raise their legal costs in order to force them to back down. That won’t happen, but their costs have already started rising as they fight back to protect open source access to drug checking technology.

Spread the Word!

Share this campaign page and the GoFundMe on social media and with everyone you know who works in harm reduction or cares about people who use drugs. This is a precedent-setting issue that may influence how harm reduction technologies are developed and distributed in the future.

Emanuel and Matt are currently working on a quantitative fentanyl test, arguably the most important overdose prevention product after naloxone. The outcome of this fight may not just determine whether this product gets released, but also the freedom of anyone else to produce similar products for any drug.