Notice: Julia Justusson wrote this submit, which was initially printed on the ktMINE weblog. Republished right here with the writer’s permission.
That is the second installment in ktMINE’s Hashish sequence. In Half I, it mentioned the marijuana IP panorama generally and explored emblems within the business. On this submit, it investigates the potential motion of Large Pharma and multinational agricultural companies into the hashish area.
Patents as Indicators of Company Priorities
Patent knowledge can present a helpful indicator of exercise throughout all kinds of industries. Right here, we look at the patent portfolios of a number of main companies rumored to be getting into the hashish recreation.
Monsanto
Monsanto first launched genetically modified pesticide-resistant soybean seeds in the USA again in 1994. Since then, it has grown and now produces a minimum of a 3rd of the USA’ corn and soy crops.
Fifteen % of Monsanto’s patents, when checked out over all time, fall below the Cooperative Patent Classification codes (or CPC codes) C12N, Microorganisms or enzymes compositions thereof, and A01H, New crops or processes for acquiring them. Based on Eric Podlogar, market lead of IP technique and valuation at ktMINE, CPC codes are important when evaluating patent portfolios. Whereas the standard of those classifications remains to be enhancing, CPCs alongside supplemental evaluation can present a helpful indication of firms’ priorities and foremost areas of technological growth.
Once we slim our search to incorporate solely patents printed inside the final 5 years, practically 30% of Monsanto’s patents fall below the A01H New crops or processes … class. This means a shift in Monsanto’s priorities and a good stronger emphasis on plant-related R&D and IP actions.
Patenting hashish crops or elements of the plant is a sticky state of affairs, though not inconceivable. The U.S. authorities holds a utility patent on some nonpsychoactive compounds derived from the marijuana plant. A plant patent is barely totally different. The Canna Legislation Weblog explains the 2:
Particularly, whereas a plant patent has solely a single declare that defines the scope of the patent, a utility patent can have a number of claims, every addressing totally different elements of the plant or methods of utilizing the plant which can be disclosed within the specification of the patent.… IP safety for hashish crops was once theoretical, however this modified just lately. Within the final two years, the PTO has issued plant patents, e.g., U.S. PP27475 P2 (Hashish Plant Named “Ecuadorian Sativa”), and utility patents, e.g., U.S. 9,095,554 (Breeding, Manufacturing, Processing, and Use of Specialty Hashish).
Based on Statista in cooperation with New Frontier Information, 44% of cannabis-related patents filed in the USA between 1976 and 2017 fell into the “plant biology” class, with 25% within the “medical/pharmaceutical” class and the remaining share of patents break up between different classes together with testing/course of methodology and new product formulation.
Supply: Statista
Scotts Miracle-Gro
Scotts Miracle-Gro, an organization identified for its fertilizers, grass seed, and filth, has just lately been granted a variety of patents associated to hydroponics and indoor plant rising programs. These embody Manifold for hydroponics system and strategies for identical and Horticulture develop mild, as proven beneath.
Supply: ktMINE patent database; picture from patent full-text doc on Espacenet
Jim Hagedorn, the CEO of Scotts, has publicly expressed his perception that marijuana is the “greatest factor” within the garden and backyard enterprise. “We’re speaking filth, fertilizer, pesticides, rising programs, lights.” These statements align with the above patents discovered by means of a seek for Scotts Miracle-Gro in ktMINE’s database.
Scotts has additionally acquired a number of hydroponics firms prior to now few years, together with Daylight Provide and Botanicare.
Supply: KtMINE Firm Profile/M&A Offers. Hawthorne Hydroponics LLC is a identified subsidiary of Scott’s Miracle-Gro.
GW Prescription drugs
GW Pharma is the highest proprietor of cannabis-related granted patents. It owns 5% of the whole of those patents, with the subsequent high firm holding lower than half that quantity, round 2.4%.
Research of Epidiolex, a plant-derived CBD remedy, have proven that it considerably decreases the frequency of drop seizures in adults and kids with sure kinds of epilepsy. Greenwich Biosciences, a U.S.-based subsidiary of GW Pharma, produces Epidiolex. Simply over 1 / 4—26.4%—of the patents GW Pharma holds point out “epilepsy,” which is sensible on condition that GW Pharma’s Epidiolex product is the primary and solely FDA-approved pharmaceutical formulation derived from the marijuana plant.
Along with epilepsy, GW Pharma’s patents embody a wide range of pharmaceutical purposes of cannabis-derived compounds, from therapy of neuropathic ache, mind most cancers, and schizophrenia to topical treatments for inflammatory pores and skin illnesses.
Sativex, a GW Pharma product used as therapy for signs of a number of sclerosis, was the primary cannabis-based remedy to be licensed within the U.Ok. Bayer markets Sativex in the UK and Canada, however it’s not at the moment permitted to be used in the USA. The ktMINE agreements database incorporates a full-text license and distribution settlement indicating that Bayer and GW first partnered as early as 2003, though Sativex was not obtainable within the U.Ok. till 2010 regardless of GW’s hopes for early approval.
Supply: ktMINE IP Platform.
Supply: ktMINE IP Platform incorporates hundreds of thousands of patents and assignments. Click on picture for publicly obtainable full-text settlement.
Bayer is often regarded as a pharmaceutical firm, however it’s managed as a life science firm with three divisions: Client Well being, Crop Science, and Prescription drugs. Its Crop Sciences division invests extra in analysis and growth than every other firm within the agricultural business.
Large Agriculture Meets Large Pharma
Earlier this 12 months, Bayer acquired Monsanto. As talked about above, Bayer has a partnership with GW Prescription drugs, with Bayer holding unique rights to market GW’s cannabis-based Sativex product within the U.Ok. and Canada.
Michael Straumeitis, founding father of a hydroponics vitamins firm, has said that the connections between Monsanto, Bayer, GW Prescription drugs, and Scotts Miracle-Gro spell severe hassle for the way forward for hashish. He believes Bayer and Monsanto will make the most of genetically modified marijuana crops to impact a “company takeover of the marijuana business,” with the purpose of forcing customers who need to use cannabinoids to “get a physician’s prescription and purchase marijuana compounds from companies.”
The specter of Monsanto creating GMO marijuana was a broadly circulated (and extensively debunked) web hoax a couple of years in the past. That stated, the corporate’s acquisition by Bayer is value additional consideration. It’s a significant transfer towards additional consolidation of the agricultural business and may simply be the hyperlink between agriculture and pharma that turns “company hashish” from believable to inevitable.
Penalties for the Hashish Trade
Journalist Steve Davis mentioned the potential penalties of the Bayer-Monsanto acquisition with Straumeitis. In a 2016 article for Large Buds Journal (“a kind of Huffington Put up for the medical marijuana growers neighborhood”), Davis writes:
The company pursuits and immense political energy of Bayer, Monsanto, and Scotts Miracle-Gro, enforced by the World Commerce Group and worldwide patent regulation, may end in company possession of marijuana seed inventory, prohibition of hashish growers producing their very own strains, GMO marijuana, and reduce within the variety of hashish strains obtainable.
Straumieitis suspects that the company plan is to genetically modify marijuana, set up patented GMO marijuana seeds and strains within the market, after which use patent and trademark enforcement to assault marijuana seed breeders and rob us of our seeds.
That is the precise mannequin Monsanto has used to assault farmers worldwide, Straumietis says.…The company objective is to ban rising your personal hashish so that you’ll be compelled to purchase “medical merchandise” comparable to Sativex.
By conversations with varied mental property specialists, Vice Information extensively explored this risk in its 2016 article “What a Looming Patent Struggle Might Imply for the Way forward for the Marijuana Trade.” Based on Hilary Bricken, lawyer and chair of the Canna Legislation Group, marijuana farmers are most cautious of company competitors (versus prison prosecution). “These individuals aren’t apprehensive in regards to the Division of Justice anymore,” she stated. “Now they’re apprehensive about Monsanto.”
Patenting Prevention as an Act of Safety
Marijuana is federally unlawful in the USA however authorized on the state degree in over half of the nation. (That is coated extra extensively in our first submit, “Hashish: IP Points in a Budding U.S. Trade.”) Its unlawful standing is probably going one of many solely obstacles at the moment stopping main companies from getting into such a fast-growing business—one projected to achieve as a lot as $47.3 billion in North America by 2027.
To forestall massive firms from getting into the business if and when federal legalization does occur, some are deliberately including proprietary hashish data to the general public area. Patents can’t be granted for crops that exist already. Publicly printed hashish plant knowledge basically act as proof that may block the patenting course of, as defined beneath.
Supply: The Open Hashish Mission
The Open Hashish Mission (OCP) is a nonprofit group that’s constructing an open-source repository of genetic knowledge of present hashish strains, in an try to make strains each publicly obtainable and unpatentable. OCP states:
Many years of cautious stewardship and breeding have made hashish into some of the various, attention-grabbing and highly effective crops on this planet. The rising wave of legalization—and the mental property competitors that comes with it—could have the unintended consequence of narrowing and proscribing this variety.
OCP is constructing a clear and open supply repository of hashish knowledge that can someday develop into an archival document of all present hashish varieties. This documentation effort is a important step in guaranteeing that these crops stay obtainable to all, unrestricted by commercialization or patenting, free for anybody to develop and promote.
OCP hopes that documenting hashish crops will assist to guard hashish biodiversity and hold the marijuana business “culturally and economically various.”
Some assume the hashish business will find yourself trying just like the beer market—dominated by a number of massive mass distributors, with small craft firms placing out high-quality, artisanal merchandise. In a just lately launched report on hashish in Canada, Deloitte even said that “leisure [marijuana] consumption will finally change into normalized and mainstream, eliciting about as a lot response as having a pint of craft beer.” Might Bayer change into the Anheuser-Busch of the hashish sector? Solely time will inform.
Concerning the writer: Julia Justusson
As a ktMINE analysis analyst, Julia Justusson processes and examines mental property every day. Taken with monitoring innovation throughout varied fields by means of IP, she makes use of ktMINE to determine IP patterns that may present perception into an organization’s technique and business traits.
