Why Patent Cannabis? For Markets, Mostly.

On May 20, Charlotte’s Web, the Colorado-based CBD giant and arguably one of the most significant names in legal cannabis, revealed that the business was awarded its 2nd federal patent on a cannabis plant.

Unlike the business’s 2018 plant patent on a Farm Bill-compliant high-CBD hemp cultivar– which was the first hemp stress to receive federal intellectual property protection– US Patent No. 10,653,085 is an utility patent

This suggests, after satisfying a more extensive process, including dropping off thousands of seeds at an official United States depository, Charlotte’s Web now declares as its copyright both the cultivar of hemp the company calls CW1AS1 along with “approaches” of plant production and cannabinoid extraction.

Okay! Why patent a hemp pressure– why patent 2? For patent lawyers or competitors of Charlotte’s Web in the CBD market, it portends a little more, but just a little.

At least in the meantime, cannabis patents like this one aren’t actually meant to defend copyright in court– which is where a patent has its most practical worth.

No, this patent is most likely implied for the market. I have a patent” may be the distinction between signing a check, or not.

Patents “produce interest in the company, and are something financiers would look at,” said Jonathan Hyman, a patent lawyer and partner at the Los Angeles workplace of Knobbe Martens.

Whether Charlotte’s Web would implement the patent, and how, “stays to be seen,” he added.

Company authorities were not available to go over the matter.

Though cannabis-related patent applications have been a thing given that well prior to legalization and have actually tripled since 2015, as IP Watchdog kept in mind, the simple expression “marijuana patent” can still be triggering in marijuana circles. Patent talk can frequently lead to galaxy-brain thinking like the “Monsanto is supporting legalization in order to take marijuana” or the “Philip Morris is buying up land in Humboldt County” conspiracy theories.

In the case of Charlotte’s Web, the business’s currently secured what’s most likely its most important property: its name. Charlotte’s Web is named for Charlotte Figi, the sufferer of childhood epilepsy who delighted in relief from her symptoms after taking an extract of high-CBD cannabis grown by the Stanley bros (and who passed away previously this month after contracting COVID-19).

The world came to know Charlotte Figi and the Stanley bros, seven photogenic Coloradans whose given names all begin with J, after they were plainly included in a 2014 CNN unique hosted by Sanjay Gupta. A really popular children’s book and a very well-known and identifiable name, the business was sure lock down the name “Charlotte’s Web” with a hallmark– one the business is currently defending in federal court, after a competing business attempted market CBD items called Charlotte’s Web.

That’s what patents are for in terms of the law. Markets are another matter– and it’s worth observing that the business went public after protecting its first patent.

Like practically all publicly traded business in the marijuana sector, Charlotte’s Web is stuck in high-loss doldrums after hitting early peaks.

For the previous week, shares in Charlotte’s Web have been trading in the $7 to $9 variety in the Toronto Stock Exchange.

Regardless of being sold in more than 11,000 stores, the business still lost $1.7 million in 2020— a hit smaller sized than other companies in the marijuana sector, however still in the red.

Patenting hemp genes and the procedures to accomplish them will not be adequate to rescue the rest of the company’s lost worth.

” Having this patent, that they can wave around and state, ‘Hey, we’ve got protection on it, and it’s the very best variety [of CBD rich hemp] that you’re going to get,'” stated Andrew Merickel, who holds a Phd in neuroscience and is likewise an attorney and partner at the San Francisco office of Knobbe Martens. “That’s quite important.”

How important? That’s all approximately the reasoning of the marketplace.