Trying to corner the market on legal marijuana

https://www.gq.com/story/the-great-pot-monopoly-mystery

by seoguru • 9 years ago

124 64 9 years ago

Ah, patents again. Who wants free markets when you can have a winner-take-all system based on government-granted monopolies.

etplayer2• 9 years ago

Ah, capitalism. Who wants the free association of individual producers as labourers when you can have wage labour and the cycle of capital crisis in a commodity economy backed up by the State acting on behalf of the property owners for the benefit of the rich to the detriment of the poor as Adam Smith noted even in the 18th century?

The free market was so called because it is free from control of its participants :)

Edit: To be clear, I'm arguing against capitalism as a manifestation of freedom, I'm sure we both agree that patents and copyrights should not exist in a free society, though.

scaryspooky2• 9 years ago

Ah, socialism. Who wants a non-totalitarian state when you can just enslave the people like all the utopian socialist societies.

Oh, are we just being hyperbolic? A capitalist would say a socialist is wrong and this is cronyism. A socialist would say capitalism is wrong and this is cronyism.

dmichulke• 9 years ago

Please note that free market capitalism (Austrian economics) is not at all in favor of patents (because it creates a temporary monopoly), though I think copyrights are still a thing (because you must not just copy somebody else's work and just claim it was yours).

You may think the above two reasons apply to both patents and copyrights but I will argue they don't once someone asks me for it :)

arca_vorago• 9 years ago

What annoys me is I was trying to tell people this was were this was headed. I suspect Monsanto is the big player or affiliated with whoever it is.

The right to grow needs yo be solidified.

rando4442• 9 years ago

If you'd read the article, you'd know it's not Monsanto.

gwern• 9 years ago

It would not be surprising if they were counting on the possibility of selling to the giants like Monsanto. The giants don't dare get involved directly at the early stage, just too much legal and reputational danger, but they are one of the logical exits for people who can go in earlier and lock up all the IP.

rando4442• 9 years ago

Great article.

I love good journalism like this. Well written, informative, and interesting.

Thanks for sharing!

josefdlange• 9 years ago

I in particular enjoyed the narrative it was woven into -- following the steps of the investigation bit by bit.

DoctorNick2• 9 years ago

I went ahead and looked up these patents. This one looks particularly bad:

https://www.google.com/patents/US9370164

This basically grants them a patent on every single cannabis plant which has >3% THC and CBD, and which Myrcene is not the dominant terpine. Can anyone who knows their bud say which strains this could be applied to?

Also, the specification on this is HUGE. This represents a large investment; they're going to filing continuations on this until the cows come home.

EDIT: I found this website: http://analytical360.com/

This lists a number of strains that could potentially read on this, such as Gorilla Glue: http://analytical360.com/m/archived/261533

jasonlaramburu2• 9 years ago

Myrcene is the dominant terpene in all strains of cannabis according to this study: http://www.internationalhempassociation.org/jiha/jiha4208.ht...

Cannabis has been cultivated and sold illegally in the US for almost a century. It seems unlikely that the USPTO would be able to enforce compliance when law enforcement has not.

microcolonel• 9 years ago

The PTO is not charged with enforcing patents, that's what the courts are for.

Taek• 9 years ago

Legal marijuana will push out illegal marijuana. Large, industrial farms will outcompete anyone who is growing illegally.

And that is going to make it much easier to regulate. Patents have the potential to pick the winners in this industry if they are handed out irresponsibily.

DoctorNick2• 9 years ago

Unfortunately, this study is from 1997 and is out of date. This study from 2011 suggests that at least some strains do not have Myrcene as the dominant terpene: https://www.fundacion-canna.es/en/variations-terpene-profile...

drewmol4• 9 years ago

I once had an economics professor who insisted the bigger hurdle to marijuana legalization was monetizing it. It's a quite unique cash crop in that it only takes a small area and small amout of labor to produce large supply. His words, paraphrased: "You can grow enough marijuana in your basement to meet the demands of your whole neighborhood! And it's a difficult thing to patent to use IP ownership as a revenue model..."

Looks like BioTech Institute LLC (and I'm sure lots of others) are trying to address the second point.

toufka• 9 years ago

Similar to tobacco - which has a bunch of regulations associated with growing it for sale.

drewmol4• 9 years ago

Similar, however the space requirement to produce enough tobacco to satisfy the demand of a typical cigarette/cigar smoker is drastically larger than for marijuana.

grecy2• 9 years ago

It's also extremely simple to produce enough alcohol for your entire neighborhood in your basement with a home-made still.

That has not stopped the monetization of alcohol...

People who want to make billions from this will simply lobby until there are extremely strict laws in place to protect their profits, and then also lobby to make sure there are wars and extremely strict punishments for violators of those laws.

koolba• 9 years ago

Distilling liquor is significantly more dangerous than growing a plant.

rangibaby• 9 years ago

Even the easiest homebrewing requires more knowledge and skill than dumping some seeds in your garden, which is literally all you need to do to get an acceptable crop of weed

indescions_2017• 9 years ago

Headline of this evening's South China Morning Post: How China Quietly Grew Into a Cannabis Superpower

http://www.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/2108347/green...

Article states that more than half of the 600 patents related to cannabis are held in China. Unclear if they relate to industrial hemp or medicinal uses.

The race to get coveted FDA approval is even more heated. If GW Pharmaceuticals' stock price is any indication, it may be first out the gate with its CBD-based epilepsy treatment, Epidiolex.

A powerful drug derived from marijuana is on the cusp of federal approval

http://www.businessinsider.com/marijuana-epilepsy-drug-2017-...

millzlane• 9 years ago

Funny....my cousin just got locked up for that a few weeks ago.

stephengillie• 9 years ago

Tell him to move somewhere that it's legal.

Simon_says• 9 years ago

His ability to move now might be impeded.

mnm1• 9 years ago

This is absurd. If these patents are ever enforced, I hope the cannabis industry doesn't stop until they've destroyed this company, the people who run it, and anyone who associates with them. In a court of law or otherwise.

gcb0• 9 years ago

they already are for soy and corn et al...

perpetualcrayon• 9 years ago

What is the current state of Case Law with regard to DNA in the US? And how, if at all, would this carry over to the genetics of plants?

How much of a natural product is it safe to say is patentable? And how much of the patent has to depend on things like "processes of manufacturing", etc?

igichdyfhc• 9 years ago

Its amazing that we at all allow the possibility of a field brimming with promise, that resulted in so much oppression to poor minorites, to be suddenly, just as the moment turned towards freedom, captured and terms dictated by a small group of rich people when others have bled, been deprived of their freedom, and were there first.

Animats• 9 years ago

Nobody filed a post-grant objection. It's easy to challenge a patent in the first 9 months, but 9,370,164 has been out for more than a year.

rdiddly• 9 years ago

So everybody goes back to growing it surreptitiously.

erikb• 9 years ago

The sad thing about growing up is that most of the magic unicorns die. Yes, it is a nice story, but if it is not the 1 in a million exceptional story it's probably one of the five big players behind this company. And if they really are close to getting a legal lock on the market the other big players are either making deals with them already behind closed doors or they are partnering up and we'll soon see legal battles about these patents.

For the end result it also doesn't really matter how the fight will go. Either 1, 2 or 3 of them will find a balance that all of them can live with and the rest of the market will just die, starting from the smaller participants, either by going bankrupt or by merging with bigger players. Soon everything will become legal and you can buy standardized packages in the super market with a few illegal players continuing to gamble against the law but never really making big bucks out of it.

Trying to corner the market on legal marijuana

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