Abstract
The purpose of this review is to advance the field of applied cannabis research by providing insights into the patenting of medical cannabis and current intellectual property rights (IPR) data.Medical cannabis (MC) patent and plant breeders’ rights (PBR) registrations are filed on industrially applicable aspects of research. Studying the filing data and trends informs researchers of both gaps in current applied knowledge in MC (where patents have not been filed) and prior knowledge (where patents have already been filed).Our focus is on those intellectual property rights (IPR) that are registered and germane to technical innovations in MC and related products. These are patents and PBR and thus exclude trade secrets, copyrights, franchises, or trademarks. Methods used for surveying the defined IPR landscape include searches of publicly available patent and PBR data and classifying the data according to the upstream–midstream–downstream innovation paradigm of the MC industry.The findings suggest that the technical knowledge as expressed by patent filings is growing commensurate to the economic and legislative activity. Specific cannabis patents in agricultural technologies directed at improving yield, efficiency, and quality (known as “agritech”) are being filed and granted. These agritech-focused patents represent original novel and applied MC research achievements that address specific problems in cannabis cultivation, such as protection of the cannabis crop, maximizing cannabis yield, harvesting and post-harvesting of cannabis, and new advantageous varieties. Patents on ex planta and in planta cannabis genes expression have been published in recent years while patents on extraction methods for cannabinoids have increased since 2015. Much patent activity is in the downstream category of MC patient-oriented products and delivery systems for a very wide range of medical indications and disease conditions.The emerging importance of access and benefit-sharing treaties and regulations is noted with implications on the industry briefly discussed. Patent data on leading and emerging patentee companies and institutions are shown. We also provide evidence of prior art and freedom to operate.
Highlights
Medical cannabis (MC) or medical marijuana is defined as those products prescribed by physicians for patient therapy
Approximately 2000 patent families directed to various MC technologies were found
The filings are concentrated in the USA (26.25%), Europe (12.26%), Canada (10.25%), and Australia (7.20%) with the remainder filed in other territories or at the intermediate international PCT (Patent Cooperation Treaty; WIPO) stage (Fig. 1b)
Summary
Medical cannabis (MC) or medical marijuana is defined as those products prescribed by physicians for patient therapy. There is no agreed definition of medicinal cannabis. The term is often used to refer to the therapeutic use of herbal cannabis and its constituents (Whiting et al 2015). The cannabis plant contains more than 100 different chemicals, known as cannabinoids. Delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) and cannabidiol (CBD) are the main relevant chemicals used in medicine (Bridgeman and Abazia 2017). THC produces the “high” that people feel when they smoke marijuana or eat foodstuffs containing it. The number of patients receiving medical cannabis products in the USA is estimated at over 3,000,000, with physicians in other countries such as the UK, Europe, Canada, Israel, and Australia increasingly prescribing MC to their patients (Number of Legal Medical Marijuana Patients - Medical Marijuana n.d.)
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