BANKING
Title: Cannabis Banking Is a Matter of Public Safety
Author: Law.com
Date: 22 May 2018
URL: https://www.law.com/thelegalintelligencer/2018/05/22/cannabis-banking-is-a-matter-of-public-safety/
Extract:
Let’s say ABC LLC applied for and was granted permits to grow, process and dispense cannabis pursuant to its state’s medical marijuana regulations. ABC now operates a 120,000-square-foot cultivation facility and sells its cannabis-related products, which include THC and CBD vape oils, tinctures and pills, through three dispensaries. Because, as discussed below, marijuana is federally unlawful, ABC has been unable to obtain a bank account with a commercial bank. ABC’s workarounds to not having the same access to capital and daily banking services hinder its business and raise issues of public safety in ABC’s local communities.
To build its cultivation facility, ABC needed $20 million to finance construction. ABC was unable obtain a traditional construction loan from a commercial bank; prevailing interest rates for such loans were approximately 4.5 percent. ABC was instead forced to privately raise capital. High net worth individuals stepped in and agreed to finance the construction at an 18 percent interest rate, with a portion of the debt convertible to equity upon the achievement of certain licensing and sales milestones. ABC’s founders will lose everything if ABC does not succeed, and their ownership of ABC will be diluted even if it does.
HEMP
Title: Supporters of legalized hemp are counting heavily on Mitch McConnell
Author: McClatchy
Date: 21 May 2018
URL: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/politics-government/article211551994.html
Extract:
The future of hemp legalization is up to Mitch McConnell. Period.
House supporters of the idea tried to include legalization measures into the big farm bill lawmakers have been considering, but were advised to back off
McConnell’s taking care of things, they were told.
Reps. Andy Barr, R-Kentucky, and James Comer, R-Kentucky, and others tried to get the House to vote on a plan.
PATENTS
Title: Reggie Gaudino: The Patent Whisperer Could Dr. Reggie Gaudino hold the key to avoiding a looming cannabis IP apocalypse?
Author: MG Retailer.com
Date: 21 May 2018
URL: https://mgretailer.com/reggie-gaudino-the-patent-whisperer/?mc_cid=9d3a5b2663&mc_eid=178dec0b63
Extract:
It’s been four years since he arrived at Steep Hill Labs, a published genetics researcher with eighteen years of intellectual property experience “writing, prosecuting, and managing patents and patent portfolios in fields as diverse as software and telecom to biotechnology and molecular genetics,” per his bio. He took on two heady job titles—Vice President for Scientific Operations and Director of Intellectual Property—and in the intervening years, in addition to his official duties, Gaudino sounded a constant refrain reminding the industry to guard intellectual property or risk losing it. The warnings, which I first heard a few years ago during one of Green Flower Media’s first series of streamed industry talks, remain dishearteningly germane today as the number of cannabis patent filings increases monthly.
“Nothing’s happened, not a damn thing, and the patents keep coming,” a frustrated Gaudino said in April. “The patent I was talking about [during the Green Flower Media presentation] that would be so detrimental to the industry was issued. It was a utility patent on a strain of cannabis, couched in a breeding-process patent, but that’s the thing—you can’t just look at a patent title and get anything from it. Unless you look at the claims, which people never do, you don’t understand what the patent is for.”
MASSACHUSETTS
Many Massachusetts farmers denied entry to recreational cannabis industry
NEW JERSEY
UTAH