Get Ready For Legal Marijuana...: As The Patent War On Marijuana Fires Up

Steve Cool · Oct 12, 2012

In the U.S., while politics is divided on marijuana legalization, economy already got its hands on the business that may result from this drug marketing. Big tobacco firms, and not only, are already taking the race to grab the copyright of trademarks related to the possible production and sale of cannabis-based products. Given that the fact that this drug is illegal overseas does not constitute an obstacle for names and logos registration. These big multinationals’ choice is justified by today’s existence of an industry using marijuana for medical purposes only, for a value of $1.9 billion. So, as more and more patients look for alternative treatment and often orientate towards alternative administration forms of marijuana and its derivates, the U.S. patent bureau recently received a series of applications concerning the possibility to register recipes and products containing the illegal substance. Including the weirdest ones, such as for example the recipe for a marijuana cheesecake.
Actually, if in Europe there are specific exceptions in public order and health, in U.S. legislation, as we said, there is no explicit prohibition of this kind to registration through intellectual property. There only is a generic obligation to indicate the product marketing date associated with that trademark. However, this issue is not completely clear in terms of right to intellectual property and may cause problems only after a third party complaint, provided that the person entitled has not used the trademark for other perfectly legal products. For this reason too, in 2010, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office had (temporarily) included in product categories related to trademark registration the following one: ‘Substances obtained from plants for medical purposes, notably medical marijuana’.
Someone already tried to have exclusive rights on the name ‘Purplekush’ (a variation of marijuana) and especially big tobacco’s firms are doing the same thing with similar names: yet, if cannabis became a commercial product, thus flowing freely, these brands would risk to turn out as generic, just as would be for a flower marketed with the name of ‘daisy’.
After all, should this not be the case, with marijuana trade liberalization (even though limited to medical applications), small producers would be at a complete disadvantage compared with large producers, who have industrial skills and exclusive rights on names and symbols mostly associated with that type of product. source

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Get Ready For Legal Marijuana...: As The Patent War On Marijuana Fires Up

Steve Cool Steve Cool

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Marijuana.com Most Popular & Essentials

Get Ready For Legal Marijuana...: As The Patent War On Marijuana Fires Up

Steve Cool Steve Cool

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