Things are moving fast in the international pharmaceutical industry\u2019s push to turn the chemicals behind the remarkable properties of the cannabis plant into trademarked products. Unsurprisingly, a special emphasis is on cannabidiol, or CBD\u2014a compound with wide-ranging medical potentials still being uncovered. This May alone, several patents and intellectual property agreements were sought or secured for CBD\u2019s applications.<\/p>\n
First,\u00a0Peak Health<\/a>\u00a0of San Francisco announced it had filed a patent application for testing the \u201cbioactivity\u201d of the CBD molecule. According to the company\u2019s\u00a0press release<\/a>, \u201cbioactivity\u201d is the complex interplay between a drug and its corresponding receptor in the human body, enabling its ability to produce a biological response. This testing method could be key in the development of effective drug products from CBD.<\/p>\n \u201cAll research papers published about CBD, from plant sources, have not accounted for variations in their bioactivity,\u201d said Dr. Sharma Kristipati, director of the company\u2019s new lab to measure CBD bioactivity.<\/p>\n Next up was\u00a0Kalytera Therapeutics<\/a>\u00a0of Marin County, which was issued a U.S. patent for the use of CBD for the prevention and treatment of \u201cgraft versus host disease\u201d (GVHD<\/a>), a complication that can follow transplants of tissue from a donor to a patient.<\/p>\n \u201cWe now have very strong intellectual property protection that will provide us with market exclusivity for the use of CBD in GVHD through early 2034,\u201d said Kalytera CEO Robert Farrell in the\u00a0press release<\/a>.<\/p>\n Callitas Therapeutics<\/a>\u00a0of Vancouver, meanwhile, announced an \u201cintellectual property agreement\u201d for development of CannaMint Strips, a method for oral delivery of cannabinoids. An intellectual property agreement is a contract between a business and its partners in the development of a product that is still patent-pending, recognizing the company\u2019s claim to the product.<\/p>\n \u201cOur patented and patent-pending technologies have the potential to be game-changers as delivery mechanisms for CBD and THC,\u201d said Callitas CEO James Thompson in a\u00a0press release<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Then, there are licenses to develop a patent held by another entity.\u00a0Kannalife Sciences<\/a>\u00a0of Pennsylvania boasted in a\u00a0press release<\/a>\u00a0that it currently holds two licenses with the\u00a0National Institutes of Health<\/a>\u00a0for the commercialization of US Patent #6630507, for \u201cCannabinoids as Antioxidants and Neuroprotectants.\u201d Specifically, the firm will\u00a0research the efficacy of CBD in combating\u00a0hepatic encephalopathy<\/a>, which is the decline of brain function due to the failure of the liver to remove toxins from the blood. As\u00a0Cannabis Now has reported<\/a>, the U.S.\u00a0Department of Health and Human Services<\/a>, the NIH parent agency,\u00a0secured a patent in 2003 for the use of cannabinoids in these functions.<\/p>\n GW Pharmaceuticals, a UK-based multinational with\u00a0globe-spanning ambitions<\/a>, also has a\u00a0portfolio of intellectual property related to the use of cannabinoids in the treatment of cancer, with several patents and pending applications in both the United States and Europe,\u00a0according to New Cannabis Ventures<\/a>.<\/p>\n All this activity is setting off alarm bells in certain activist and scientific circles.<\/p>\n Mowgli Holmes, the chief scientific officer with\u00a0Phylos Bioscience<\/a>, an Oregon-based research outfit focused on cannabis genomics, in an interview with\u00a0GQ<\/a>\u00a0last year warned that a firm called BioTech Institute LLC has started to register \u201cutility patents<\/a>\u201d \u2014 that is, patents for a particular new product or application \u2014 on the cannabis plant.<\/p>\n \u201cUtility patents are big. Scary,\u201d Holmes said. \u201cAll of cannabis could be locked up. They could sue people for growing in their own backyards.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n BioTech Institute \u201cbarely exists,\u201d the GQ report notes. \u201cThe company has no website, manufactures no products, and owns no pot shops. Public records for BioTech Institute turned up two Los Angeles addresses\u2014a leafy office park an hour northwest of downtown and a suite in a Westside skyscraper\u2014both of which led to lawyers who didn\u2019t want to talk.\u201d<\/p>\n Online records indicate that BioTech Institute does\u00a0hold several patents<\/a>, protecting \u201cmethods for the breeding, production, processing and use of specialty cannabis.\u201d<\/p>\n Mowgli Holmes is currently involved in a\u00a0Cannabis Evolution Project<\/a>, which he described as developing \u201ca genealogical map of the evolution of the plant\u201d in a\u00a0video interview with The Oregonian<\/a>. A part of the aim here is to establish which strains and applications of the plant are part of an established intellectual commons, and therefore free from patenting.<\/p>\n Fears about\u00a0corporate cannabis<\/a>\u00a0have been\u00a0mounting among small growers and their activist allies since the big push for legalization began nearly a decade ago now.<\/p>\n The\u00a0Press Trust of India<\/a>\u00a0notes a conference that just opened this week in New Delhi, to pressure for a re-opening of negotiations at the\u00a0World Trade Organization<\/a>\u00a0on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPs<\/a>). India wants greater assurances that its ancient traditions of herbology in\u00a0Ayurvedic medicine<\/a>\u00a0will be protected from \u201ctheft\u201d by corporate patenting. The\u00a0Convention on Biological Diversity<\/a>\u00a0protects this form of \u201ctraditional knowledge\u201d \u2014 defined as collective intellectual property, which is passed on from generation to generation within a community. India\u2019s government is particularly concerned to stop \u201creckless patenting\u201d of traditional knowledge such as the healing properties of\u00a0neem<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0turmeric<\/a>.<\/p>\n Cannabis growers, advocates, patients and users will also have to grapple with this question: Which aspects of the plant\u2019s applications qualify as \u201ctraditional knowledge,\u201d and which are truly novel and therefore open to patenting? With the list of patents on cannabis applications growing fast, this issue demands attention from the cannabis community.<\/p>\n TELL US<\/strong>,\u00a0do you think companies should be able to obtain cannabis patents?<\/p>\n The post Companies Scramble for CBD Patents, Igniting Fear of Corporate Cannabis<\/a> appeared first on Cannabis Now<\/a>.<\/p>\n
Things are moving fast in the international pharmaceutical industry\u2019s push to turn the chemicals behind the remarkable properties of the cannabis plant into trademarked products. Unsurprisingly, a special emphasis is on cannabidiol, or CBD\u2014a compound with wide-ranging medical potentials still being uncovered. This May alone, several patents and intellectual propertyContinue Reading<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":190,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"false","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4472,713,50,4473,136,4314,170,2196,4474],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26638"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/190"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26638"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26638\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26639,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26638\/revisions\/26639"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26638"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26638"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26638"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
The Potential Dangers of Cannabis Utility Patents<\/h4>\n
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Cannabis Patents for Traditional Knowledge?<\/h4>\n
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\nRead More: Companies Scramble for CBD Patents, Igniting Fear of Corporate Cannabis<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"