{"id":48715,"date":"2021-07-07T09:18:00","date_gmt":"2021-07-07T17:18:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/2021\/07\/07\/what-you-should-know-about-the-cannabis-patent\/"},"modified":"2021-07-08T13:45:15","modified_gmt":"2021-07-08T21:45:15","slug":"what-you-should-know-about-the-cannabis-patent","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/2021\/07\/07\/what-you-should-know-about-the-cannabis-patent\/","title":{"rendered":"What You Should Know About the Cannabis Patent"},"content":{"rendered":"<\/p>\n

As befits an enormous entity that includes both Immigration and Customs Enforcement as well as the Library of Congress, the \u201cfederal government\u201d is not a monolith \u2014 except for when \u201cthe government\u201d is an evil character, looming like Freddie Krueger or distorted shadows in Plato\u2019s cave in the poor minds of its citizens. A fine example of this theory in motion is\u00a0US Patent 6,630,507<\/a>, the \u201cfederal government\u2019s patent on cannabis.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

First published in 1999, this patent application is for \u201ccannabinoids as antioxidants and neuroprotectants,\u201d and the filers were scientists working at the federal government\u2019s National Institutes of Health. The fact that \u201cthe government\u201d holds a patent on medical use of cannabis, while at the same time \u201cthe government\u201d bans cannabis in all forms and (less so every day, but still a real possibility) sends armed agents of the state after grandmothers with joints, is usually interpreted in one of two ways: the government is a giant hypocrite, or the government is planning some nefarious power move to thwart legalization \u2014 and monopolize the commercial and medical powers of marijuana.<\/p>\n

The 20-Year Itch<\/strong><\/h4>\n

Like a cold sore, Patent 6,630,507 is mostly harmless but refuses to go away, and it seems to appear in the discourse every few years or so. The most recent round of outrage and rumor was triggered in late May, when viral content farm Uber Facts posted a\u00a0Tweet about the patent<\/a>\u00a0that was later picked up by cannabis news aggregator Blacklist on Instagram.<\/p>\n

The truth is far less harmless than rumors. Here\u2019s all you need to know about the patent.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Old News<\/strong><\/h4>\n

Federal patent law allows anyone to try to patent any \u201cnew and useful\u201d technique, device or compound \u2014 and that includes stuff that\u2019s illegal. In this context, \u201canyone\u201d includes agents of the federal government, including researchers working on grants for the NIH, which also funds research at universities. Very notably, cannabis is very useful, but it\u2019s not new; and since it\u2019s an ancient plant used by humanity since the dawn of time, nobody alive can claim to have discovered it.<\/p>\n

But this patent \u2014 which, if you read it, is limited to a \u201cmethod of treating diseases\u2026wherein the cannabinoid is nonpsychoactive\u201d \u2013 doesn\u2019t make your \u201cweed plants copyright infringements,\u201d as one poster put it on Instagram.<\/p>\n

In fact, this patent doesn\u2019t do much of anything. For starters, this patent \u2014 issued in 1999, and never renewed past an initial 20-year period, according to publicly available filings, which is when patents die unless they\u2019re renewed \u2014 appears to be expired.<\/p>\n

\u201cOn its face, US Patent No. 6,630,507 has been expired for a few years now,\u201d said Larry Sandell, a patent attorney with Mei & Mark LLP and an expert on proprietary cannabis intellectual property. \u201cAs such, neither the government nor anyone else can sue for infringing its claims.\u201d<\/p>\n

What About CBD?<\/strong><\/h4>\n

But even if it wasn\u2019t, the patent is specific enough not to have much impact on either the adult-use or medical cannabis industries \u2014 including giants that have actually deployed cannabis-based medicines to the market like GW Pharmaceuticals. GW is the company behind medicines based on the non-psychoactive cannabinoid CBD, Epidiolex. GW was recently acquired by Jazz Pharmaceutials in a blockbuster deal. And this patent didn\u2019t seem to have much impact on that.<\/p>\n

The NIH did not immediately respond to inquiries from Cannabis Now, but in the past, the NIH has explained that it pursued the patent so that discoveries that might benefit the public don\u2019t sit idle.<\/p>\n

In this case, NIH researchers \u201cdiscovered that non-psychoactive compounds in cannabis may potentially have antioxidant properties that could be beneficial in the treatment of certain neurological diseases,\u201d\u00a0as agency spokeswoman Renate Myles told The Cannabist back in 2016<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Crucially, as Myles explained, the patent was only for \u201ccannabinoid chemical compounds structurally similar to THC\u201d\u2014 and \u201cnot for the whole marijuana plant,\u201d she told the website.<\/p>\n

But just because you have a patent doesn\u2019t mean you have anything beyond a patent \u2014 and the patent itself may have no value. This appears to be the case here.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Exclusive Wrongs<\/strong><\/h4>\n

Kannalife, a company based in Pennsylvania,\u00a0claimed in 2012<\/a>\u00a0to have acquired an \u201cexclusive license\u201d to develop a pharmaceutical treatment based on the patented technology to treat chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE, the disease found in professional athletes with repeated head trauma.<\/p>\n

Kannalife did not respond to a request for comment, but it is unclear what value the patent offered Kannalife, which recently rebranded to Neuropathix. The company, which says it licensed the patent between 2012 and 2019,\u00a0later introduced<\/a>\u00a0a patented molecule to be used in a treatment referred to as \u201csuper CBD.\u201d The takeaway is that the government patent didn\u2019t seem to do Kannalife any favors.<\/p>\n

For all the hype around CBD, CBD is not a particularly powerful drug. Recent research suggests that for fast relief from afflictions like nausea,\u00a0THC is much more effective.<\/a>\u00a0And THC was not included in the government\u2019s application.<\/p>\n

Okay, so why bother? Since the NIH did not respond to requests for comments from Cannabis Now, we\u2019re left with informed speculation. But even guesswork provides a few clues \u2014 and they\u2019re all very boring.<\/p>\n

Researchers love to register accomplishments, be it a patent application or a published article. A patent application looks nice on a scientist\u2019s resume, regardless of whether it goes anywhere.<\/p>\n

In this case, the government is the ultimate \u201cowner\u201d of the patented technology, since the government funded the research via the NIH. The researchers may simply have wanted to show that they did something with the money and lab time \u2014 and what they found wasn\u2019t that revolutionary, considering the ongoing CBD research in Israel in the 1990s.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen the government pays for the research, it owns any patents that are issued from that research,\u201d said Michael Backes, an author and cannabis researcher (who is also the applicant on a patent for cannabis DNA technology<\/a>). \u201cThe subject of a patent is not required to be federally legal, unlike US trademarks. The only reason there is a fuss is because the fussy don\u2019t know the law.\u201d<\/p>\n

About the most valuable takeaway from the never-ending outrage over Patent 6,630,507 is that the Controlled Substances Act \u2014 which declares marijuana a dangerous drug with no medical value \u2014 is a scientifically unsound and outmoded law that contradicts itself and is designed to do little more than help authorities punish its political opponents.\u00a0<\/p>\n

And you don\u2019t need a Clinton Administration-era patent application that expired before the coronavirus pandemic to tell you federal law is long past due for an update.<\/p>\n

The post What You Should Know About the Cannabis Patent<\/a> appeared first on Cannabis Now<\/a>.<\/p>\n


\n
\nRead More: What You Should Know About the Cannabis Patent<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As befits an enormous entity that includes both Immigration and Customs Enforcement as well as the Library of Congress, the \u201cfederal government\u201d is not a monolith \u2014 except for when \u201cthe government\u201d is an evil character, looming like Freddie Krueger or distorted shadows in Plato\u2019s cave in the poor mindsContinue Reading<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"false","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[50,15677,5839,1127,90,15678,4474],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48715"}],"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\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=48715"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48715\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":48716,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48715\/revisions\/48716"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48715"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=48715"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=48715"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}