Why Patent Marijuana? For Markets, Primarily.

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

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

This suggests, after satisfying a more rigorous process, consisting of dropping off countless seeds at a main United States depository, Charlotte’s Web now claims as its intellectual property both the cultivar of hemp the business calls CW1AS1 as well as “approaches” of plant production and cannabinoid extraction.

Okay! Why patent a hemp stress– why patent two? For patent attorneys or rivals of Charlotte’s Web in the CBD industry, it hints a little bit more, but simply a little.

A minimum of for now, cannabis patents like this one aren’t actually meant to defend intellectual property in court– which is where a patent has its most practical worth.

No, this patent is most likely indicated for the market. Patents like this exist mostly for companies to please and woo investors, for whom a business’s ability to say “Look! I have a patent” might be the difference between signing a check, or not. And like all publicly traded marijuana companies, Charlotte’s Web has a lot of startled and mad financiers who need pleasing.

Patents “create interest in the company, and are something investors would take a look at,” stated Jonathan Hyman, a patent lawyer and partner at the Los Angeles office of Knobbe Martens.

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

Business officials were not available to discuss the matter.

Though cannabis-related patent applications have been a thing considering that well before legalization and have tripled because 2015, as IP Watchdog kept in mind, the simple phrase “cannabis patent” can still be activating in marijuana circles. Patent talk can often result in galaxy-brain thinking like the “Monsanto is supporting legalization in order to steal cannabis” or the “Philip Morris is buying up land in Humboldt County” conspiracy theories.

When it comes to Charlotte’s Web, the business’s currently secured what’s probably its most important property: its name. Charlotte’s Web is named for Charlotte Figi, the victim of childhood epilepsy who took pleasure in relief from her signs after taking an extract of high-CBD cannabis grown by the Stanley brothers (and who died previously this month after contracting COVID-19).

The world familiarized Charlotte Figi and the Stanley brothers, seven photogenic Coloradans whose first names all start with J, after they were plainly featured in a 2014 CNN unique hosted by Sanjay Gupta. A really well-known kids’s book and a very famous and recognizable name, the business made sure lock down the name “Charlotte’s Web” with a hallmark– one the company is currently safeguarding in federal court, after a rival company dared market CBD items called Charlotte’s Web.

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

Like nearly all openly traded companies in the marijuana sector, Charlotte’s Web is stuck in high-loss doldrums after striking early peaks.

For the past week, shares in Charlotte’s Web have been selling the $7 to $9 range in the Toronto Stock Exchange. That’s a huge gain from the $4.24 seen at the business’s mid-March nadir, but still far listed below last summer’s high-water mark of $2821, set in August.

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

Patenting hemp genes and the procedures to achieve them won’t be enough to rescue the rest of the business’s lost worth.

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

How valuable? That’s all approximately the logic of the marketplace.