There is growing concern in the American marijuana industry "about what may happen on the intellectual property frontier if and when legalization spreads across the country," Greg Walters writes at VICE in a story out today. In recent years, there's been an explosion in new strains with wacky names, and growers are looking to patent their strains just like one might for a new type of apple or rose. If or when America decriminalizes pot, our intellectual property laws could clash with the pot business boom to create one hell of a legal mess, very quickly.
Boing Boing pal Michael Backes, author of "Cannabis Pharmacy" and a contributor to Boing Boing's video series on cannabis, spoke to VICE News for this story. Backes is one of the world's great cannabis science experts, and is involved in developing new forms of this ancient medicine which, I should disclose, I use daily for issues related to cancer.
Mike is one of the inventors behind a notable marijuana patent that Greg Walters at VICE was recently tipped off to. Patent No. 9095554 "relates to specialty cannabis plants, compositions and methods for making and using said cannabis plants and compositions derived thereof," reads the 145-page document describing a range of hybrid strains with specific cannabinoid ratios designed for various physiological effects.
Snip:
A number of patents for the medical use of cannabis already exist, but Patent No. 9095554 is the first to be issued for a plant that contains significant amounts of THC, according to Veitenheimer, Gaudino, and Jonathan Page, a founder of Anandia Labs and scientist who co-led the team that sequenced the first cannabis genome.
"Our patent lawyers were really, really surprised that there weren't more applications" for individual strains or classes of cannabis, said Michael Backes, one of the patent's three listed inventors and the author of Cannabis Pharmacy: The Practical Guide to Medical Marijuana. His lawyers, he noted, "expected a ton of them, and there weren't any. Ours was the first."
In America, new varieties of plants, produced either through traditional breeding or as genetically modified organisms (GMO), can be considered intellectual property just like music, art, books, software, and architectural design — a fact that has allowed Monsanto to sue farmers for planting patented seeds that weren't purchased from licensed vendors.
So far, marijuana breeders are working in the traditional way, and nobody is known to be attempting to produce GMO marijuana.
Not even big ag firms. Monsanto recently denied internet rumors that they plan to engineer weed. "Monsanto has not and is not working on GMO marijuana," the company says. "This allegation is an Internet rumor."
"What a Looming Patent War Could Mean for the Future of the Marijuana Industry" [VICE]
Michael Backes, cannabis expert and longtime friend of Boing Boing.
Packages of edible medical cannabis products available at LAPCG. I like this brand.
Various strains of medical marijuana on display at the Los Angeles Patients and Caregivers Group, the dispensary where I obtained medical marijuana during my treatment for breast cancer.
