Progress of Registered Trademark

I am reminded of how far Colorado has come in incorporating cannabis into our society. Take a minute and go to the Colorado Department of Revenue website: https://www.colorado.gov/revenue. Click on “Marijuana” and it opens up a whole world of comprehensive information for consumers, business people and citizens to look at how we have adapted cannabis to be a legal part of our culture. Who would have dreamed 10 years ago that the government would have such a comprehensive website. It even tells us which counties and cities allow cannabis and how much money the government is making off of taxing cannabis.

When I first opened my law practice to include medical cannabis in 2009, there were just a few attorneys working in that area. Nowadays, with medical cannabis and retail cannabis in Colorado and other states, it is big business among many large and small law firms. With the multi-faceted world of legal cannabis now in business, real estate, regulatory law, patents and trademarks, international law, accounting, tax issues, licensing, employment and other areas of the law there are myriad of legal issues to address. You can see trade shows and conferences springing up in multiple states throughout any year. Cannabis is arriving and the genie will not be put back in the bottle.

Even with the flood of cannabis businesses throughout the country, it remains difficult to get trademark protection for the many cannabis products sold in the many states. One entrepreneur recently announced that she was the first female-run company able to obtain a trademark registration from the federal government. Miss Ah Warner, owner and operator of the company stated, “My company, Cannabis Basics, was awarded not one of the first but ‘The’ first TM Registration for a logo with both the leaf and the word cannabis covering a cannabis product, not a service or educational institution. The USPTO (United States Patent and Trademark Office) granted this based upon my hempseed oil line having nothing to do with CBD or THC but will by default protect my THC/CBD line that is only available in the great green state of Washington.”

So this is a cannabis company granted a trademark for hempseed oil, but the logo and name of her company, which also sells products containing CBD and THC, will also be protected. The Stanley Brothers, who are known extensively for their development of a CBD oil administered to children with epilepsy, has federal trademark protection for “Charlotte’s Web Hemp Products.”

Obtaining federal trademark protection on cannabis related products and names are prohibited because cannabis remains as a Schedule I drug under the Controlled Substance Act (CSA, 21USC863(d)). Under federal law it is not lawful to place into commerce a Schedule I drug as they have been found to have no medicinal value and are highly addictive and therefore, a federal trademark will not be issued to a name or product. It is just a matter of time before this will change.