Yes, I don’t either, but it doesn’t matter at the end of the day–federal legalization of cannabis (“hemp”) means patents are now in play. Most people in the cannabis industry lack a firm understanding of patent law or why it is so important to file on anything and everything if you are a commercial breeder. We have three utility patents filed for specific breeding methods (which fall under the “method class” of utility patents)–the one being referenced here was our first. The risk of NOT filing for patent protection after independently developing a disruptive breeding technology / technique is that anyone else CAN file and exclude you from using your own invention. This particular filing (early flowering hybrids) is not to exclude others, but to protect our right to exist and continue using the technique–this is known as a “defensive patent”.
Our CBG patent specifically includes the DNA sequence for the unique gene we found through targeted inbreeding and is responsible for CBG accumulation in our type IV varieties. The sequence is not present in any global genome repository (NCBI etc.) and is directly linked to our breeding work. Rather than a defensive approach, that particular utility patent application is meant to demonstrate our position as the first commercial supplier of our CBG varieties in the world–anyone selling seed or clones with this unique gene present are doing so in contravention of our material transfer agreement. It does not prevent others from finding their own unique genes that lead to CBG accumulation, but it does prevent everyone from inappropriately accruing commercial benefit at the expense of our hard work and investment.
Someone posted above saying something like “I won’t buy from companies that patent”. Cool. Your prerogative. Food for thought regarding two forms of competition: I was speaking on a panel at the Organic Seed Grower’s Conference on Friday with one of our farmers (Tiffany Fess, West Virginia), the CEO of Phytonyx (a “competitor”), and the CTO of Phylos. In that talk, Phylos announced that they filed utility patents AND plant variety protection (PVP) on their single variety for sale in 2020 (auto flower CBD, something we were the first to create in 2016 and offer for sale in 2017). Phytonyx–who has a history of making unstable F2s of our work–announced that they are releasing CBG clones and seeds for 2020. It is hard to maintain composure while your competition describes how they are monetizing your work while sitting next to you. The Phylos situation is fairly clear; all commercial cannabis breeders are now dealing with the unfettered forces of global capitalism and a competition to carve out valuable niches in the ecosystem–in a “first to file” system, not filing allows others to exclude you from the field and the race for low-hanging fruit will result in many strange initial filings (utility patent for auto flowering?). Innovate (and file) or die. The Phytonyx situation is also clear–regardless of how much work or effort any one breeder or company puts into a project (in the CBG case, 4 years, millions of dollars, and tens of thousands of labor hours), your competition will never stop absconding with your work if it can make them money at your expense. The Phytonyx speaker asked me after the panel how our CBG patent works (obviously no understanding of heritability or what he was trying to copy); he was noticeably more pale after I explained the situation to him (i.e. if you are breeding with our work or selling clones of our stuff, the origin is directly linked to us and we will hold you accountable) because he mistakenly thought that all CBG varieties would “look the same genetically”. WTF.
Final note to provide additional color / clarity on this. I woke up at 3am today to go through two days of chromatograms before heading over to my R&D greenhouses. First email in my box was from a client who just bought 5k “White CBG” seeds from us. This one was a chain email blast offering to sell me CBG clones (“Sweet Caroline”, “Stardust”, “CBG Gold”, etc.). Again, WTF. Shit like that happens every day, but I try to not let it get to me, otherwise I wouldn’t make it through the morning. That stack of raw chromatograms are the latest screening results coming out of our varin projects (CBDV, CBCV, CBGV, THCV). In 3 years, we have spent over $7m on analytical testing alone to get to where we are at today, which is being able to find the right chemotype 1.3% of the time. Plants can’t be accurately tested until they are sexually mature, so these projects take up an awful lot of space and resources–and we end up cutting down 98.7% of the initial plants, usually when they are 3-4 feet tall. Of the plants with a proper chemotype, roughly 1 in 20 are making the cut as potential mothers for seed production (2021 release, pending field trials of progeny this summer). In other words, we have valuable greenhouse space devoted to testing plants, of which only ONE in 1700 will make the cut (to say nothing of the 3 years and thousands of plants it took to even make it this far)–it takes 12k sq. ft. of space and 2 months to find that one plant. When we are done with this project, farmers will be able to plant a seed and have a guarantee that trimmed flowers will be roughly equal parts CBD / CBDV and federally compliant in time for harsh, universal USDA rules in 2021. I do not know of any other company devoting resources or energy to the breeding process like we do. Miracle plants tend to fall from the sky at other companies 6 months after we release lines–weird, isn’t it? We keep doing it, every day, even in the face of would-be profiteers posing as patrons of the plant, because we love what we do and believe in our mission–but it certainly gives us pause when people rip us off and others validate it by saying “don’t support Oregon CBD because they try to patent stuff”.