November 10, 2025 • 52 mins
We explore how local elections shape cannabis policy on the ground, then dive into the real map of cannabis patents with Dr. Ruth Fisher. She explains who holds the IP, why enforcement is scarce for now, and how one big verdict could change the industry overnight.
• grounding in stoicism and local civic action
• breaking news on recalls and lawsuits in New York and Florida
• Dr. Ruth Fisher on 10,000+ cannabis patents and prior art
• global patent holders across pharma, tobacco, academia, and government
• patent thickets versus single filings and why enforcement is rare
• plant patents, phenotype variation, and proof of similarity
• synthetics, biomanufacturing with yeast, and conversion patents
• damages explained: royalties versus lost profits and documentation
• delivery tech surge, including emulsions and beverages
• optimism for innovation, concern over fragmented regulation
• case for descheduling and one coherent framework
Get The Medical Cannabis Primer at medicalcannabisprimer.com or on Amazon. Connect with Ruth on LinkedIn.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Dr. Ruth Fisher (00:00):
It the lawsuits are coming.
And I think that if you get alawsuit with a big damages
settlement, that that's going toincentivize a lot of other
attorneys to come in and takecases on contingency.
And I think the dominoes aregoing to start to fall.
Ben Larson (00:24):
Hey everybody, welcome to episode 112 of High
Spirits.
I'm Ben Larson and I'mrecording solo this week.
Anna Ray is hopefully voting,but it's also out sick.
So feel better, Anna Ray.
We hope to have you back soon.
It is Tuesday, November 4th,2025, and it is election day,
(00:46):
like I was saying.
And I was at the gym thismorning and I was doing my 5
a.m.
routine and I was I waslistening to this great podcast.
It's called Solve by my friendMark Manson, who who is the
author of the book uh The SubtleArt of Not Giving.
And on that show, he had themodern stoic Ryan Holiday.
(01:08):
He's the author of like 10Stoic books.
I've been studying Stoicismsince 2017.
And anyways, they were theywere discussing uh one of the
core principles of Stoicism andhow you should focus on the
things that you can control, letgo of the things that you
can't.
You could have a very deepdiscussion about what you can
control.
Obviously, I'm someone whofinds myself meddling in many
(01:30):
things, but I feel that thething that keeps me grounded day
over day, week over week,especially right now, is that
you know I do center aroundunderstanding what I do have
complete control over, and Ifocus most most of my energy on
that.
Anyways, when it comes toelections, and it is not a
presidential election year, asyou know, we're still in the
(01:51):
first year of uh of Trump'sadministration, um, but there
are different initiatives thatare happening, critical
initiatives in certain states,like Virginia, all around the
nation.
And what you need to know aboutelections, and and I've had to
tell myself this living inCalifornia, is that maybe your
vote doesn't matter in certainthings, like a presidential
(02:12):
election, because maybe yourstate always votes a certain
way.
But what you do have controlover is what's happening in your
own region, in your own city,in your own state.
And so I am encouragingeveryone to get out there and
vote.
And just to kind of highlightmy motivation behind telling you
this is that the mostinfluential people on the hill
(02:32):
right now, with the exception ofprobably the one at the very
top, did have some humblebeginnings in their political
journey.
And so here's a few just as anexample.
Chuck Schumer, Democrat fromNew York, minority leader, uh
started in the New York StateAssembly at 23.
So he was elected on by thelocal constituents and worked
(02:54):
his way up over many, manyyears.
Uh Mitch McConnell, Mitch,Mitch, Mitch, Mitch, uh, began
as a county judge in Kentucky.
And now he holds theappropriations and farm bill in
his hands.
Uh John Thune is a formercongressional aide, turned House
member in the 90s.
(03:14):
Kamala Harris started out asSan Francisco's DA, and Rand
Paul was an ophthalmologist.
So take that for whatever itis.
But just all this to say isfocus on your local, your local
elections.
You never know where people aregoing to end up or how
redistricting is going to go asfar as California goes and Prop
(03:36):
50 goes.
But that's my anecdote fromthis morning.
Uh, I've been up for a fewhours already, but let's kind of
progress through the show.
And again, I don't have myrudder with me.
Anna Ray is always doing such agood job at driving us through
the show that uh I'm reallystarting to actually miss her
when she's not here.
As far as the news goes, NewYork is going through a massive
(04:00):
recall through Omnium Cana, aLong Island processor under
investigation for allegedlyrunning an inversion scheme,
opposite of diversion, helpingunlicensed or out of state
companies move product into theNew York market.
So brands like Stizzy and MFuse took a massive hit.
Others like Groan are defendingtheir compliance.
(04:23):
All this to say is that thestates continue to trip and
fumble and is highlighting anopportunity to better regulate
the systems or create systemsthat are regulatable because the
tracking process in New Yorkleaves a lot to be desired.
In Florida, uh, there's alegalization lawsuit.
(04:45):
Smart and Safe Florida is suingGovernor Ron DeSantis, accusing
his administration of misusingstate funds to block their adult
use ballot initiative.
Freedom means different thingsdepending on who defines it, but
in cannabis, Florida's votersmight finally get to define it
for themselves.
(05:05):
Anyways, after stumblingthrough that, let me just get to
the good part of the show andbring on our guest.
Our guest today is Dr.
Ruth Fisher, co-founder of CANDynamics, an economist, systems
modeler, and educator who helpsdecode how cannabis as both a
medicine and a market createsreal value.
(05:26):
Ruth's work bridges theeconomics, technology, and
biology, modeling how laws,culture, and infrastructure
interact to shape cannabisoutcomes.
She's also one of the fewvoices mapping the global patent
landscape in cannabis and hemp,revealing where innovation is
actually happening.
(05:47):
So, Ruth, welcome to the show.
How are you doing today?
Dr. Ruth Fisher (05:51):
Thank you for having me here.
I'm I'm doing wonderful.
And as you were talking, I wasthinking that it's never a dull
day in cannabis, is it?
Ben Larson (06:02):
No, no, it's it's persistent entertainment.
Uh I'm I'm I'm approaching I'mapproaching my 10-year
anniversary in the industry, andI will say there has never been
a dull moment.
In fact, if I go two weeks withsomewhat normalcy, I start to
get nervous.
It's like it maybe it's thatstoic and me it's like, oh,
(06:22):
something's gonna go wrong.
I have to like figure out likewhat's next, what's what bad can
happen.
Dr. Ruth Fisher (06:27):
Seriously, yeah, it's one of the most
dynamic industries I've everseen.
And the you know, the fact thatwe have the legal markets
rolling out in different states,and then you know, the hemp and
the the illicit markets andeverything else, it's just
there's always so much going on.
Ben Larson (06:47):
Yeah, yeah.
Well, and you have a verydiverse background.
I was reading through it,economists, you're you're
looking up patents, and and andthe reason we have you on the
show is because you publishedthis great paper where you had
downloaded over 10,000 cannabispatents and started kind of
sorting through it to try to getan understanding of the
(07:08):
landscape of the patent worldfor cannabis, which I think is
uh largely unknown.
Like we we have some patents,but like I didn't realize how
broad the patent brought broaderportfolio of cannabis patents
was until I saw your report.
And so, how does an economistuh go on a massive patent hunt
(07:31):
and trying to map out the entirepatent world for the cannabis
industry?
Dr. Ruth Fisher (07:36):
That's a great question.
So I had kind of in my formerpre-cannabis life uh spent a lot
of time with patents andtechnology and licensing and
been in that world.
And several years ago, I haddone an earlier analysis of
patents in cannabis.
And so I knew that there atthat time I had managed to find
(07:56):
several hundred or more.
And more recently, with thetalk of uh rescheduling to
schedule three, you have youknow that issue of research in
cannabis.
And a lot of people are saying,well, there's really been no
research in cannabis because ofall the schedule one
restrictions.
And um, I was talking with someother people and they said,
(08:19):
yeah, there really is, you know,very little research and
there's you know no patentactivity.
I said, Well, that's not infact true.
There is are actually patents,and so I decided to update the
analysis and went in and I wasdoing the analysis, and this is
kind of in the midst of all theschedule three uh rescheduling
discussions, and people and sothe topic of patents came up,
(08:43):
and I would say, you know, howmany patents do you do you think
there are?
And people would say, Well,there are none at schedule one,
or you know, some people say,Well, almost none because it's
schedule one.
I said, Well, how many do youthink?
Take a guess.
And they would say, I don'tknow, 50, 100, maybe 200.
Now, I went to the US PTO,that's a US US patent and
(09:05):
trademark office.
That's you know, the the officethat issues the patents, and
just to clarify, anyone whowants to protect an invention
while engaging in activity inthe US markets needs to own a
patent if they want to be ableto, you know, have patent
protection on that entity.
So there's US companies, and ifyou're foreign companies
(09:29):
selling products in the USmarket, you also need a patent.
So if you're like Toyota andyou're selling your Toyota cars,
that's a Japanese company, butthey're competing in the US
market, so they need to have apatent.
So you'll have Japanesecompanies holding patents and
American companies, Ford and GM,holding patents.
So it's the same thing foranything.
So um I went to the US PTOtrademark, uh USPTO uh database
(09:55):
and did a I wanted a very narrowsearch for what I was doing.
So I did a very narrow search,and lo and behold, up came
roughly 12,000 or so patents formy keyword search.
And the the database would letme download 10,000 patents.
They put a limit on it.
(10:15):
So I downloaded those 10,000patents and worked through them.
Um, but that's kind of how Igot into that venture.
Um, and when I tell people, youknow, no, there's actually like
10,000 patents out there, it'sjust it's it's mind-boggling and
it's very surprising to people.
Ben Larson (10:34):
I mean, what also might be surprising to people,
basically anything sounds likeit might be surprising if people
believe there's only 50 to 100,but of those 50 to 100 or
10,000, like the US governmentactually holds cannabis patents
as well.
And so I'm curious, you saidsurprising, as you were going
through this list of patentholders.
What did surprise you?
(10:55):
Like, who's holding a lot ofpatents?
Like, where you know, whattypes of companies are holding
these patents?
Dr. Ruth Fisher (11:02):
Wow.
Um, so uh the database containsissued patents, and I was
interested in active patents,and I started reading, and one
of the things that surprised meis I'm reading through, and when
you're doing a patent, it'skind of like any formal uh uh
(11:25):
study that you publish, isgenerally you have to say, okay,
I'm doing a study on this, andhere's what other people are
doing in this general area.
Here's why what I'm doing isdifferent from what they've
done.
And so there's a lot of patentsout there.
Well, they where, especially inthe medical area, where they
say, Well, you know, I'm I'mdealing with a pain product and
(11:48):
cannabis is out there and it'sused for pain, but I'm not I'm
not doing a cannabis approach,I'm doing something else, but
cannabis is there, um, it hasproblems, a lot of, you know,
the psychoactivity um is is oneof the big problems, but they're
doing something else.
And so I weeded out a lot ofpatents that weren't directly
(12:10):
relevant because they werementioning cannabis as being in
the prior art, but not in theactual invention.
And so, kind of one of thethings that surprised me off the
bat is how much recognitionthere is out there of cannabis.
And this is, you know, in themedical area, most of these are
looking at therapeutics.
(12:32):
So when you're talking againabout schedule three, and people
are saying, well, you know,schedule three would be great
because all of us it wouldunleash the ability to do
research, it would make it a loteasier.
And while it would remove somehurdles, there seems to be a
misnomer that there hasn't beenany research.
And there's actually been avast amount of research in, you
(12:53):
know, where they're actuallyresearching, they're inventing
in cannabis, but also they'rerecognizing that cannabis is out
there and doing something kindof peripheral or tangential.
So that was kind of one of thebig primary things that I
learned.
Um as far as the that wasn'tdirectly relevant to the
question you asked, um forcountry-wise, um I I was looking
(13:20):
at at patents where if uh youhave like three or more patents
because it's a ton of one-offs,and I couldn't I couldn't get to
all those.
But if you look at um companiesthat hold at least three
patents, there are roughly 30countries holding patents in the
US patent and trademark office.
(13:42):
And that I found reallysurprising.
Company countries like SaudiArabia, uh, which was
interesting.
Ben Larson (13:50):
That is very interesting.
Dr. Ruth Fisher (13:53):
Um, of course, New Zealand, Australia, um, just
all over the world, all overthe world.
And so that was that was reallyinteresting.
Now you have a lot of those areresearch institutions, a lot of
universities.
Universities do a lot ofresearch and they often serve as
pipelines for pharmaceuticalcompanies.
(14:13):
So they're developing the earlystage research and then they
license it to pharmaceuticalcompanies.
That was very interesting.
As you said, the U.S.
government through um theUnited States Navy, the United
States Army, um, Department ofHealth, they hold a lot of
different patents.
And that was also veryinteresting, especially, you
(14:34):
know, as we know that it'sschedule one.
It's like, okay, either eithercannabis is useful, in which
case it shouldn't be scheduleone, or it's not useful and you
shouldn't have patents.
Um that was and then thevariety of different uh
industries represented was alsovery surprising.
Um I was interested in thepharma, um, who, which of the
(15:00):
pharmaceutical companies?
Um it turns out that a lot oftraditional pharmaceutical
companies have patents incannabis.
That was very interesting.
You also have a lot of newpharmaceuticals, I call them
cannabis pharmaceuticalcompanies.
So they're kind of going theFDA route, or they're acting
like a traditionalpharmaceutical company, but they
(15:22):
were founded to developcannabis technologies.
Ben Larson (15:27):
So this is like earlier versions of like GW
Pharma or I know Charlotte'sWebb recently started pursuing
their medicine.
Yeah.
Dr. Ruth Fisher (15:36):
Yeah, there's an Israeli company called
Buzzlet, I think, uh, which is acool name.
And there's also medical devicecompanies.
So for like inhalers uhvaporizers and stuff, um, for
their, I would, as I said,medical device companies.
Um and so there's there'scannabis pharma, there's
(15:57):
traditional pharma, there'sobviously the tobacco companies,
um, British American tobaccoand Philip Morris hold a lot of
patents in uh vapingtechnologies, um products for
vaping uh tech uh vapingcannabis.
Um you have uh the largestpatent holder is a company
(16:19):
called BASF, and that's a bigGerman industrial company.
They hold 140 patents, and mostof that is in cultivation.
And so they're looking atincreasing plant yields, at um
gene splicing, so honing kind ofwhat you're gonna end up
(16:39):
growing, um pesticides andfungus control.
Now, a lot of thosetechnologies that they're
developing um are relevant forcannabis, but also many other
different types of crops.
Ben Larson (16:53):
Right.
Dr. Ruth Fisher (16:54):
But they hold a lot.
Um, and you have Bayer, whichis that's actually a big
conglomerate, and they do holdmedical patents, but they also
hold a lot in cultivation and Ibelieve uh pesticides.
And so it's it was interestingto me that you had a lot of
patents in the area ofcultivation, which presumably is
(17:16):
creating all the raw materials,presumably for pharmaceutical
companies.
Ben Larson (17:22):
So a lot of those kind of seem almost obvious.
Yeah, Philip Morris havinghappy having vaporizer, they had
the icos and and and all thatkind of stuff anyway.
So it's like, okay, it's not afar leap.
But they're kind of also likesitting out on the periphery.
Like, I haven't heard of peopleenforcing patents on on the
(17:44):
industry, and so that eithermeans people aren't aren't
infringing them or they're justlike not really caring.
And how should we think aboutpatents?
Like, if we're creating acompany and doing things, how
deeply should we be out there,you know, investigating what
patents are owned and not beingused in the industry?
(18:04):
Maybe we should be going outsearching like all these alcohol
companies and and and what haveyou, and see like, are they
forging ahead and creatingpatents around things that they
have no intention of using untilfar after legalization?
And at that point, is theresome sort of statute of
limitations or something?
Dr. Ruth Fisher (18:22):
That is a phenomenal question.
That's a really good question.
I hadn't really thought aboutthat, but so there's a limp,
there's an age limit on thepatents, and they expire after
roughly 30 years, I believe.
Um, that's changed a bit overtime.
My pre-cannabis life, I livedin Silicon Valley and it was in
the technology world, andobviously patents play a huge
(18:44):
role there.
And anyone who's who's doinganything is looking at patents
and infringing.
Um, and if you're doing astartup and you want to get VC
money, and in cannabis, it'sreally hard to get funding.
Uh, you can't go to the bankand get a loan.
And so you're you're generallygetting funding from, say, a VC,
(19:04):
a venture capitalist.
And one of the key things thatventure capitalists like, and
especially in you know,technology companies, if if
you're developing IP, is theywant a patent.
And so there's, you know,there's a tendency to get
patents.
Um, I will say that regardlessof what industry you're in, the
vast majority of patents neverhave any creating any value.
(19:29):
And so it's only a maybe acouple of percent that are even
kind of start to go down thatlicensing or development or
value process.
And even those, um, if you lookat the patents being licensed
and licensed, a lot of thosenever actually generate any
money because the uh the failurerate for startups is really
(19:51):
high.
Um, what you're doing is you'recreating a fence, you know,
with a patent.
Um the idea that there hasn'tbeen much any or much litigation
in cannabis um has beeninteresting to me from the
beginning, and that's patents orany other area.
(20:11):
And I think the the lawsuitsare coming.
Ben Larson (20:14):
Um, interesting.
Dr. Ruth Fisher (20:16):
And I think that when there's part of the
problem is cannabis federally isstill Schedule One.
And so as far as thegovernment's concerned, it's
illegal.
And they're actually um, so theshort answer is there have been
a couple of lawsuits, and thefirst one I could find was 2017
or 18.
There were uh like four suitsthat I could find that settled,
(20:40):
these are patent infringementsuits, so we don't really know
anything about them.
Um what an area of formulation.
One company was suing anothercompany, and they ended up going
bankrupt before the anythingwas resolved.
Um, yeah, and that happens alot in cannabis.
Ben Larson (20:57):
Um I was gonna say that's like not only the
litigation effort, but whypeople don't have strong patent
portfolios.
So you used kind of the fenceas an analogy just a minute ago,
and also mentioned that there'sa lot of like singular patents,
and like when you think ofpatents and you get one, it's
almost like you're putting asingle fence post in the ground.
(21:20):
Yeah.
And without the portfolio work,you know, you haven't created a
fence until you have multiple,right?
Yeah, you have one post, andwhich is pretty easy to work
around most of the time.
What have been yourobservations about companies
actually building a strongpatent strategy versus just oh
hey, we got a patent around ourtechnology?
Dr. Ruth Fisher (21:43):
In patent lingo, they call them patent
thickets.
And so what you want to do isyou want to have a bunch of
patents, you know, all aroundthe same area.
Because if you're sued forpatent infringement, the first
thing you do is you challengethe patent that you're accused
of infringing.
So you say, Well, I don't thinkyour patent's valid.
And so now the patent needs toundergo examination.
(22:07):
And the thing that's reallyimportant to understand is just
because a patent was issueddoesn't necessarily mean it's
valid.
Ben Larson (22:13):
Do you have a rough percentage of patents that do
get challenged?
Dr. Ruth Fisher (22:17):
And well, that's every patent that's
infringed is an automaticcountersuit is to invalidate it.
And you can you know, then youso you require to undergo the
require the patent holder toundergo an evaluation of the
patent, and a lot of them arethrown out, or specific claims
are thrown out, and so you get amuch weaker position.
(22:37):
And yeah, so part of theproblem, and I I've given a lot
of talks on patent valuation,and the scary thing about a
patent is it's only valuable ifyou're able to enforce it.
Um, I was giving a talk um longtime ago to a group of most of
the people in the audience werestartup people, and I gave the
(22:59):
talk on how to value a patent,and one guy raises a hand, he
says, Yeah, he says, Microsoft'sinfringing my patent, and I
sent them a cease and desistletter, and they said, So sue
us.
And well, what are you gonnado?
And it's kind of like that casethat I mentioned where that the
company went bankrupt, is weknow how shaky the finances of
(23:21):
so many cannabis companies are.
That it's not, I mean, it'sprobably a very usual situation
in cannabis, and I'veencountered it, where if you
have any sort of litigationgoing on, you have one powerful
company and one weak company,and the powerful company can
just wait out the weak companyuntil they go bankrupt and the
(23:42):
whole thing goes away, you know?
And the same thing could happenwith patents.
And so uh having a patent issexy, and you can tell people I
have a patent and it's reallycool, it's expensive to get and
you need to enforce it,otherwise, what good is having
it?
And that's kind of the trickhere.
So I would tell people it'sagain, it's the the the
(24:03):
strongest or one of the mostimportant reasons to get a
patent is to be able to getfunding.
So whether or not it's reallyvalid, um you want to have it to
be able to get funding.
Ben Larson (24:17):
I I remember was it 2018?
I I ran into John Cooper, whois the the founder and CEO of of
Ebu.
Um and I ran into him at MJ Bizright after they had sold to
Canopy Growth for like I don'tknow if it was like 300 million
or 400 million dollars, which isa lot, it was a lot of money
(24:39):
that was in the very exuberantphase of cannabis.
And uh he was telling me thatthey had built this pretty
radical patent portfolio, but itwas getting to the point where
they couldn't even afford tomanage the portfolio, defend it.
And so they it they kind ofthreaded a needle and got really
lucky and sold right at theright time.
Where someone who was wellcapitalized saw this patent
(25:02):
portfolio and be like, oh, wecan defend that, and that's
valuable to us.
But for the startup, they werelike running off a cliff because
they didn't have the capital topay all the legal expenses.
Yeah, that got me reallyexcited about patents, but also
it's just like, oh yeah, carefulabout how far you extend
yourself when you're a smallcompany.
Dr. Ruth Fisher (25:20):
It's I mean, the question of do you patent
your technology when you'restartup and you're you know,
you're bootstrapping and don'thave a lot of money to spend,
that's a really difficultposition to be in.
And some industry, someindustries you need the patents
to be able to play, and otherindustries you don't.
And I suspect there will beareas, and there's gonna be a
(25:42):
lot of um areas challenged.
And I mean, in particular,there's a lot of patents on
plants.
Can't coming up with aspecific, well, my plant grows,
I don't know, C B high C B C andC BG, or I don't know what, or
you know, really high THC orwhatever.
(26:03):
But I mean, if you go into thepatent code, you know, one of
the things they say is you can'tpatent natural substances.
Now, if you if you get the theplant to be a very, you know,
have a very sp specific geneticmakeup, does that mean that you
can patent it?
I don't know.
And I mean, a lot of peoplespend a lot of resources
(26:24):
patenting plants, but there'sbeen no litigation.
So uh one of the things I wasgonna say is it's kind of funny
because um one of the defensesis if someone's accused of
infringing, one of the firstthings they say is, Well, you
can't sue me because cannabisisn't legal.
So they're kind of trying tohave their cake and eat it too.
(26:44):
And then that's been thrownout.
That hasn't worked.
But I read that in a couple ofthe cases where they allege that
as a defense.
Ben Larson (26:53):
So you bring up the potential challenges around
patenting around a plant, likean organic organism, uh, which
leads me to start thinking aboutsynthetics, which is a very hot
topic depending on what realmof cannabis or hemp you're
you're sitting in.
Uh, what did you see as far assynthetics go?
How are different playersthinking about synthetics for
(27:17):
you know, like pharmaceuticalcompanies?
Are they building up these likesynthetic portfolios?
And I know other companies inthe cannabis and hemp industry
are probably doing the same, butmaybe for for different
purposes or differentmotivators.
Uh, what how are you thinkingabout that that side of the
plant that, or not not the plantnecessarily, but uh the
(27:38):
synthetic cannabinoid uh world?
Dr. Ruth Fisher (27:40):
I love that question.
I the topic of synthetics isreally fascinating to me and
it's multifaceted.
Um, when I first came in and Iwas looking at the the
pharmaceutical patents or themedical patents, what I had
assumed would happen would bethat the traditional pharma
companies would be dominatingthe patent holdings and they
(28:02):
would be doing syntheticcannabinoids.
So um synthetics are greatbecause you can make them in a
lab and you can make themperfectly consistent
consistently at volume, which iskind of what the whole FDA
approval process has beendesigned around.
And I assume that that would bethe case, and that's what where
the majority of patents wouldbe.
(28:23):
Um it turns out that that wasnot the case.
It turns out that actualcannabinoids, and they use it,
it's you know, some patents citespecifically therapeutics
involving THC, CBD, CBG, butmostly THC, um, or cannabinoids,
(28:44):
which I take to be phytoderived, but they could totally
a synthetic.
It turns out that theplant-based patents outweigh the
synthetic-based patents.
And so kind of this is onerealm of the synthetics.
And what was interesting to meis it's the traditional pharma
(29:05):
companies that are doing thesynthetics.
And as I mentioned, this newpharma cannabis at a group of
companies, those tend to bedoing the phyto-based.
So GW, they're playing with theactual plant molecules,
whereas, say Synophi or GLACSOare dealing with synthetics.
(29:25):
So I thought that was reallyinteresting.
Ben Larson (29:27):
Yeah.
Dr. Ruth Fisher (29:27):
You have the conversion cannabinoids, which
are also synthetic orsemi-synthetic.
And I was very interested inwhether or not that was a big
patent area.
That's the, you know, all theconverting of CBD to delta nine
and delta eight.
There's a lot of patents inthat area.
I have no idea how those aregoing to be treated.
And then there was another areaI was really interested in, and
(29:49):
there's a number of uh patentsin that area, and that's using
uh they're synthesizingcannabinoids from, say, yeast or
aldo.
Or non-canvas plants.
And so they're they'reco-opting, say, yeast, which is
a natural factory.
It turns out it's the structureof THC is is difficult to copy.
(30:14):
And if you take a naturalsource and have the natural
source make it, it might beeasier than making it say from
scratch in a lab.
So they're taking yeast andalgae and other living organisms
and they're feeding in rawmaterials and having them output
cannabinoids.
I don't have no idea how youtreat those.
Ben Larson (30:34):
Yeah, it's been a complicated conversation.
I mean, I've been looking atthese alternative methods of
cannabinoid development, let'scall it, uh, since I think 2018.
And I always had this question.
We always talk about the thesource of the cannabinoids.
Like, well, what if the sourceisn't a plant?
Um, which after spending sometime on the hill and at some of
(30:57):
the state capitals, I don't knowif anyone is ready to have that
conversation.
Like, I'm I'm people are stillasking what the difference
between THC and CBD are.
Let's take it back to theplant.
We got a we got a question herefrom Dr.
Jaehan Marco.
Uh, thanks for watching,Jayhan.
If I have a variety, uh, saygreen crack, how can I protect
(31:19):
that reputation from beingundermined uh to inferior green
crack imitators?
And I remember this questioncoming up long ago when we talk
about genetic drift and all thatkind of stuff.
Like blue dream was all therage at one point, and then it
became very clear that bluedream from one dispensary in the
Bay Area was very differentfrom a blue dream just down in
(31:42):
you know LA.
And so is there a way to belike, this actually is a really
great strain and in how and andyou can protect that cannabinoid
profile.
Is it protecting the profile oris it like the genetics that
you actually have to like refineand then create some level of
robustness so that it'srepeatable?
Dr. Ruth Fisher (32:01):
You know, if you're talking green, uh
something like green crack, andlet's just call it that, um,
that's what I'm envisioning, youknow, these plant patents are.
And the problem is the problemthat you have with cannabis, as
we know, is you have thegenotype or the genetic profile,
and then you have thephenotype, what ends up
(32:22):
happening, which is shaped bythe environment.
So you can patent the genetics,but that's not the same thing
as what it actually grows into.
Ben Larson (32:31):
Right.
Right.
Dr. Ruth Fisher (32:32):
And that's and that's really hard to control.
And when you put all of ittogether, it makes it really
messy.
And I mean, that's a greatquestion.
And a lot I I know people aretrying to figure out, well, how
exactly do you now?
It's kind of moving in theother direction.
If you take say blue dream, andif you look at say 500 samples
(32:52):
of blue dream, it's like, well,will the real blue dream please
stand up?
You know?
But if you're starting in theother direction saying, okay, I
have this one, how do I protectit?
It's it's really hard.
Um, again, it kind of comesback to the real difficulty of
trying to enforce a patent,which is, I mean, are you gonna
send people out to every farm,you know, or or every retailer
(33:16):
who's selling it or, you know,brand or whatever?
It's and then you need to, Idon't know, you would need to, I
guess this would be interestingat some point, it maybe it'll
be proven, is you need toestablish that the infringing
product uh product issubstantially similar.
Ben Larson (33:35):
Yeah.
Dr. Ruth Fisher (33:36):
Now, substantially similar, or it was
made in a substantially similarway.
And that's I believe that's theterminology used, and that's
not objective.
You know, how do you go aboutproving?
And I've thought about thisbefore, if there's a lot of
different compounds and you'relooking at one sample here and
(33:57):
one sample here, and it's kindof, you know, there's a bunch of
different things and a bunch ofdifferent things, how much
variation in each of thosedifferent, you know, the
cannabinoids and the terpenes.
Well, how do you determine thatit's substantially similar?
Or the flip side, is there youknow, different enough?
How do you define that?
Ben Larson (34:14):
So in order to it's interesting because, like, on
the on the trademark side, Ithink you can use like
terminology like confusinglysimilar, right?
And and like you can measurethat by just putting it in front
of people and see if they'reconfused, right?
But if it's like an actualtechnology, it's a little bit
harder, which also like thinkingabout trademarks, like say you
(34:35):
did build a patent around greencrack.
I mean, this industry has justproven time and time again that
people are not afraid toinfringe until they're attacked,
and we get back to the lack,lack of capital aspect and the
ability to enforce force thesethings.
There will be a time wherepeople do have the resources and
(34:55):
initiative to start enforcingpatents, right?
Do you is there a point in timeor regulation where you believe
that will happen and thatcompanies will just start
getting knocked out because ofpatent enforcement?
Dr. Ruth Fisher (35:11):
I think that what the lawsuits are coming,
and I think that if you get alawsuit with a big damages
settlement, that that's gonnaincentivize a lot of other
attorneys to come in and takecases on contingency.
And I think the dominoes aregonna start to fall.
(35:31):
And I think that once thathappens, and I think that that's
I mean, you talk about like thetesting fraud, similar there,
um, and just kind of theproducts not living up to what
they're supposed to be doing.
Um, you know, someone's gonnadie because of a, you know, a
moldy product or something, andsomeone's gonna win a very large
(35:53):
lawsuit, and that's gonna bringin a lot of attorneys and
contingency, and they're gonnastart suing.
And then you're, you know,there's gonna be, I think, a
before period and an afterperiod with a pretty clear line
of okay, here's when the lawstarted being enforced.
Because you, I mean, what'sgoing on in cannabis wouldn't
exist in any other industrybecause there would be so many
(36:14):
lawsuits that would haveprevented it.
And I don't know why, but forsome reason in cannabis that
isn't happening, although it'sstarting.
Ben Larson (36:23):
Can we dive into damages a little bit?
Because I I imagine as abusiness owner, at some point
someone's gonna send mesomething and be like, you owe
me 80 bajillion dollars, and I'mlike, that's unreasonable.
And in some cases, maybe theydo want 80 bajillion dollars,
but maybe they'll take asettlement.
But like, I don't want to givemore than than what's due.
(36:45):
And so, like, how shouldbusiness owners, whether they're
on the receiving end or theattacking end of one of these
cases, like, how should they bethinking about damages?
And then how do the courtsthink about damages when it
actually comes to awardingsomeone for patent infringement?
Dr. Ruth Fisher (37:03):
So um, if you're talking about patent
infringement, then so supposesomeone infringes, and first of
all, there have to be damages,and you have to establish
damages in order to be able towin.
Ben Larson (37:16):
So you can damage damages largely meaning like
lost revenue.
Dr. Ruth Fisher (37:20):
So this is what I was gonna get into.
Um, so you sue for infringementand so or for damages, and
there was a case that came outrecently where someone sued and
it was uh THC fraud, where youknow the labeled contents was I
don't know, hundred 150% and theactual content was like 15%.
(37:42):
And the guy sued and he said,Well, you misled me.
And the question there is,well, what are the damages?
And he said, Well, I could havebeen harmed or something, and
that's you can't get damages forthat because there's no real
you need to say, okay, what'sthe harm?
And you need to be able toreasonably quantify that harm.
(38:03):
And if you can't get areasonably, you know, if it's
too speculative, then that won'twork.
And so you need to be able todefine clearly what the damage
is and have be able toreasonably estimate those.
And in in in patentinfringement, there's two
different types of damages.
So if you can think about youhave an invention and there's
(38:27):
two ways to commercialize it.
One, you can go out there andyou can build a business around
it and you can earn money, oryou can license it to someone
else and have them, you know,build and sell the technology,
and then they will pay you aroyalty.
It's usually based on a percentof revenues, and there's, you
know, some percent, maybe fivepercent of revenues.
(38:47):
So they license your extractiontechnology, they make a million
dollars in extractions, theyowe you 10%, so they pay you
$100,000.
So a royalty is generally lowerthan a profit number because
profits generally tend to be say20%, 30%, whereas royalties
(39:08):
tend to be say five percent.
And a royalty is easier to getthan an actual profit.
And that's kind of why thenumbers are that way.
So if your patent is infringedand you say, Well, I you you
hurt me, I I lost money.
The if you can prove that thatthat you have, say, an
(39:28):
extraction technology andsomeone else infringed on your
technology on your patent andthey made a sale that you would
have made, so they got thoseprofits that you would have
made, then you need to establishthat you actually could have
and would have made or couldhave made those those uh
profits.
So for example, if you're acompany and you're operating in
(39:52):
California and you're doing yourextraction business in
California and that's all youroperations are, and someone say
in Maine or or Florida or NewYork or whatever copies your
invention and sells it withinNew York, you can't the only way
that you can get lost profitsis if you establish that you
would have made those sales inNew York.
(40:12):
Now, if you don't have anysales guys in New York and you
don't have any operations in NewYork, then you wouldn't have
made those sales.
You can't establish that youwould have made them, in which
case you get a reasonableroyalty, not lost profits.
Right.
And so to determine, well,what's that number?
Is it 5%?
Is it 10%?
Generally, there's a couple ofdifferent things that you need
(40:34):
to look at.
Um, one of the big things iswhat is what is the industry
standard?
And there tend to be industrystandards in cannabis.
There's probably, we haven'tgotten to the point, probably,
because there is no licensingreally, I don't think.
Um, but you can go into otherindustries and say, well, and in
another, like you have extractsin other industries, and so
(40:56):
what are the royalties they paythere?
And you look at kind of similarsit situations.
Another thing that's really,really, really important for
people to understand is if theyhave IP, any sort of
intellectual property thatthey're trying to protect, they
need to be able to establishthat they're taking reasonable
(41:16):
means to protect that property.
So if they're like sharing thetheir secret sauce, you know, if
they're posting it on theinternet and they're telling all
their friends and neighbors,and then later they came back
and say, well, that was asecret.
It's like, well, if it was asecret, why are you posting it
on the internet?
And you're less likely to getdamages.
On the other hand, if you canshow that, well, you keep the
(41:38):
formula locked in a safe andonly a couple of people have
access to that, then the courtswill say, Well, you were really
trying to protect it.
You, you know, you were makingreasonable efforts to protect
it.
So you wouldn't have been freeto give it out or license it.
So your damages will be higher.
So that's kind of an importantthing that people with
(41:59):
technology can do.
And, you know, in SiliconValley, you have all the tech
people there, they all havetheir notebooks where they're
documenting things to establishthat they were the first to do
it, but also they'reestablishing that they're taking
taking reasonable means toprotect their information from
other people.
Ben Larson (42:17):
I'm gonna ask one kind of selfish question because
I'm the host and I can do thatbefore I ask the the most
logical next question, andthat's regarding kind of like my
line of business, right?
So we've been building out youknow a patent portfolio just
with the work that we've done inliquid emulsions and that kind
of stuff.
And emulsion is really like aninteresting category in of its
(42:39):
own because not only is itapplicable to to beverages and
creating stable systems, um, butit's also a way to create
bioavailability for you know asan ingredient.
And so I'm curious, what didyou see in your research
regarding the realm of emulsionsystems and and kind of other
infusion technology?
And is that a robust part ofthe broader ecosystem of patents
(43:04):
out there?
Dr. Ruth Fisher (43:05):
So I would I would classify those as delivery
patents because it's a it's notjust you know patenting like a
formulation.
You're saying I'm delivering itsay in a beverage.
And I was I was very and Iseparated out the delivery, uh,
what I call delivery patentsbecause that's a big area of
interest of mine.
And so there's that was thesecond biggest area.
(43:28):
There's a lot of patents anddifferent delivery mechanisms,
say topicals.
Um, and I was I subdivided thedelivery mechanisms into two
groups, either oral delivery ornot oral delivery.
And I'm kind of keeping yoursfor last.
The non-oral delivery, there'smost in oral.
In non-oral, the biggest istopical by far.
(43:51):
And then so uh second and thirdto topical is transdermal in
patches, which are all topical.
So those are the biggest fornon-oral.
For oral, you have generaloral, they say oral delivery,
but then the water, the soluble,the emulsions, the um
(44:15):
beverages, you have you know, alot of coffee.
Um, but the generic beveragesoluble and emulsion uh
technologies is a very heavyarea of patents.
So there's a lot going onthere.
And that's I mean, that'sfundamental to being able to
(44:35):
deliver cannabis, as you said,you know, consistently with high
bioavailability.
Ben Larson (44:42):
Yeah, interesting.
One of the gating factors herethat keeps arising is that you
know it's coming, cannabishasn't been there yet, there
hasn't been a lot of funding.
Let's turn our lens away frompatents for a second, just get
your perspective on where theindustry is at.
What are you worried about?
What are you optimistic about?
Just about the state of theindustry and us getting to this
(45:05):
kind of legitimate world where,you know, for better or for
worse, there's like patentlitigation and all that kind of
stuff happening, and people areactually leveraging the the
value of what they've created.
Dr. Ruth Fisher (45:16):
I'm start with the optimism.
I'm very optimistic about theproduct and the plan.
And, you know, the mess ofhemp, whether you love it or
hate it, shows that there's thatthe speed at which it's growing
and the enormous size of themarket shows that this is a
product that people want.
And, you know, if it's if it'savailable at low prices, there's
(45:40):
huge demand.
Uh, and I think that thepotential there is enormous.
And um, I'm a technology geekand I've been watching the
technologies being developed atevery stage of the supply chain.
And it's what I would callglorious.
There's so much innovationthere.
And it's just it's kind ofsetting up for the future of
(46:03):
this plant well into the future.
And what's so amazing too isall the innovations they're
being developed for cannabisbecause cannabis is a relatively
high value product.
But so many of the technologiesbeing developed for cannabis
will have applications for otherproducts and industries as
well.
So, for example, all theextraction that's not just, you
(46:24):
know, applicable to cannabis,it's applicable to any herbal or
you know, plant or anythingelse.
Um, and so the moving forward,the diversity and the variety of
cannabis products has justtremendous potential.
What I worry about is theregulatory environment.
(46:46):
And the the problem withcannabis is it's, I mean, it's I
love complexity.
Uh, I thrive in complexity, andcannabis is more complex than
anything I've ever seen beforein so many different ways.
Everything about cannabis iscomplex.
You know, it's it's the plantand all its compounds, it's the
way, you know, theirendocannabinoid system and the
(47:08):
way that they process it, it'sthe regulatory environment, it's
the cultural environment, youknow, it's the market
environment.
It's just there's so muchcomplexity and nuance, and it
saddens me that the peoplemaking all the laws and
regulations seem to have solittle understanding, and they
keep styming the potential.
(47:29):
So that frustrates me.
Ben Larson (47:31):
It is interesting, and we lament this almost every
episode.
It's just it doesn't seem thatthere's a large learning cycle
going on from year to year, fromnew market to new market.
And it seems like we make a lotof the same mistakes that
history repeats itself everytime, and sometimes there's new
mistakes like we were talkingabout off offline.
(47:53):
It's just like it's likethey're coming up with new
innovative ways to make mistakesevery every year.
Dr. Ruth Fisher (47:59):
Well, it's it's so funny because I was watching
Californian, Californians justmagnificently kilt cannabis, and
it it's just I mean, it's beenso phenomenal, and I just I
couldn't imagine that anyonecould potentially top that.
And then New York came along.
Ben Larson (48:14):
What's I mean, hopefully this isn't too loaded
of a question, and I swear,folks, we didn't talk about this
beforehand, but Ruth, like,what's your perspective on on
what's been happening with thehemp cannabinoid market and how
that's been influencing thetrajectory of the kind of the
whole industry and plant?
Dr. Ruth Fisher (48:31):
That's a very complicated area.
Um I think it's it shows youthe beauty of human ingenuity
and the ability of people tomaneuver around any roadblock in
their uh in their way.
Um, I think it's it's it'scomplicated.
(48:53):
I personally I'm very much fordescheduling and to combining
all cannabis together under asingle framework and just
legalize the whole thing.
And I think that wouldeliminate a huge portion of the
problems that we're having.
Ben Larson (49:06):
Yeah.
Dr. Ruth Fisher (49:06):
Um I think it's unfortunate that within the
environment, there's certainplayers who you have regulators
who don't understand what'sgoing on.
Um, as I said, and you have acouple of different actors out
there who are doing things thatare not helping the industry at
all.
They're helping themselves kindof at the expense of everyone
(49:27):
else.
And just a lot of bad activitywhere, you know, we as an
industry need to do better andwe need to kind of show the rest
of the world that, you know,we're willing to step up and do
what we need, like have testingand have age gating, um, and you
know, have proper labeling andtransparency.
(49:47):
Um, and I think a lot of peoplehave been trying to do that.
They've been stymied forvarious reasons.
But again, I think that, youknow, we should just legalize it
already.
Um, and that would solve a lotof the problems.
Ben Larson (50:00):
Amen.
Amen.
A very diplomatic answer.
Thank you, Ruth.
All right.
Well, this has been an amazing,amazing conversation.
I really appreciate you takingthe time today uh to just kind
of unpack uh patents and allthat kind of stuff.
But I know there's a lot moreto your area of expertise and in
(50:20):
the things that you getyourself involved in.
And so now that it's time forour our last call, this is an
opportunity that we typicallygive our guests an opportunity
to give a last shout out, a callto action, whatever it is,
cannabis or otherwise.
And so, what did I not ask you?
What do you want to tell ouraudience?
Dr. Ruth Fisher (50:43):
I'll do a shameless book plug.
Uh, I wrote a book.
Yeah, the Medical CannabisPrimer.
Um, so that's available andit's on our website,
medicalcannabusprimer.com orAmazon, but less shamelessly,
I'm available on LinkedIn.
Um, so I love meeting newpeople.
Uh, please reach out andcontact me, and I'd love to hear
(51:05):
about you and what you'redoing.
Ben Larson (51:06):
Amazing.
Amazing.
Dr.
Ruth Fisher from Quanta and CanDynamics.
Thank you so much for spendingthe past hour with us.
You're just a wealth ofinformation.
Really appreciate you spendingthe time.
Dr. Ruth Fisher (51:19):
Thank you for such a very interesting uh and
delightful conversation.
Thank you for having me.
Ben Larson (51:24):
Amazing.
Well, we'll talk to you soon.
All right, folks, what do youthink?
Do you have your patents alltightened up?
Are you ready to defend them?
Are you ready to defendyourself if someone comes at you
with a patent?
Uh call Ruth if you need somehelp.
If stoicism teaches usanything, control what you can.
Ruth reminds us thatunderstanding the world that
(51:48):
you're operating is within yourcontrol.
So please do that.
Thank you for those leavingcomments and engaging Scott
Wessler, Jehan Marku, and allthe rest.
Thank you, Bertosa andWolfmeyer, our team members for
the support, and of course, ourproducer, Eric Rossetti.
If you've enjoyed this episode,please drop a review on Apple
(52:10):
Podcasts, Spotify, or whereveryou listen to your podcasts.
It helps us be found.
Things are looking up, but wewant it to grow more and more
and more.
Thank you, thank you, thankyou.
As always, folks, stay curious,stay informed, and keep your
spirits high.
Until next time, that's theshow.
It the lawsuits are coming.
And I think that if you get alawsuit with a big damages
settlement, that that's going toincentivize a lot of other
attorneys to come in and takecases on contingency.
And I think the dominoes aregoing to start to fall.
Ben Larson (00:24):
Hey everybody, welcome to episode 112 of High
Spirits.
I'm Ben Larson and I'mrecording solo this week.
Anna Ray is hopefully voting,but it's also out sick.
So feel better, Anna Ray.
We hope to have you back soon.
It is Tuesday, November 4th,2025, and it is election day,
(00:46):
like I was saying.
And I was at the gym thismorning and I was doing my 5
a.m.
routine and I was I waslistening to this great podcast.
It's called Solve by my friendMark Manson, who who is the
author of the book uh The SubtleArt of Not Giving.
And on that show, he had themodern stoic Ryan Holiday.
(01:08):
He's the author of like 10Stoic books.
I've been studying Stoicismsince 2017.
And anyways, they were theywere discussing uh one of the
core principles of Stoicism andhow you should focus on the
things that you can control, letgo of the things that you
can't.
You could have a very deepdiscussion about what you can
control.
Obviously, I'm someone whofinds myself meddling in many
(01:30):
things, but I feel that thething that keeps me grounded day
over day, week over week,especially right now, is that
you know I do center aroundunderstanding what I do have
complete control over, and Ifocus most most of my energy on
that.
Anyways, when it comes toelections, and it is not a
presidential election year, asyou know, we're still in the
(01:51):
first year of uh of Trump'sadministration, um, but there
are different initiatives thatare happening, critical
initiatives in certain states,like Virginia, all around the
nation.
And what you need to know aboutelections, and and I've had to
tell myself this living inCalifornia, is that maybe your
vote doesn't matter in certainthings, like a presidential
(02:12):
election, because maybe yourstate always votes a certain
way.
But what you do have controlover is what's happening in your
own region, in your own city,in your own state.
And so I am encouragingeveryone to get out there and
vote.
And just to kind of highlightmy motivation behind telling you
this is that the mostinfluential people on the hill
(02:32):
right now, with the exception ofprobably the one at the very
top, did have some humblebeginnings in their political
journey.
And so here's a few just as anexample.
Chuck Schumer, Democrat fromNew York, minority leader, uh
started in the New York StateAssembly at 23.
So he was elected on by thelocal constituents and worked
(02:54):
his way up over many, manyyears.
Uh Mitch McConnell, Mitch,Mitch, Mitch, Mitch, uh, began
as a county judge in Kentucky.
And now he holds theappropriations and farm bill in
his hands.
Uh John Thune is a formercongressional aide, turned House
member in the 90s.
(03:14):
Kamala Harris started out asSan Francisco's DA, and Rand
Paul was an ophthalmologist.
So take that for whatever itis.
But just all this to say isfocus on your local, your local
elections.
You never know where people aregoing to end up or how
redistricting is going to go asfar as California goes and Prop
(03:36):
50 goes.
But that's my anecdote fromthis morning.
Uh, I've been up for a fewhours already, but let's kind of
progress through the show.
And again, I don't have myrudder with me.
Anna Ray is always doing such agood job at driving us through
the show that uh I'm reallystarting to actually miss her
when she's not here.
As far as the news goes, NewYork is going through a massive
(04:00):
recall through Omnium Cana, aLong Island processor under
investigation for allegedlyrunning an inversion scheme,
opposite of diversion, helpingunlicensed or out of state
companies move product into theNew York market.
So brands like Stizzy and MFuse took a massive hit.
Others like Groan are defendingtheir compliance.
(04:23):
All this to say is that thestates continue to trip and
fumble and is highlighting anopportunity to better regulate
the systems or create systemsthat are regulatable because the
tracking process in New Yorkleaves a lot to be desired.
In Florida, uh, there's alegalization lawsuit.
(04:45):
Smart and Safe Florida is suingGovernor Ron DeSantis, accusing
his administration of misusingstate funds to block their adult
use ballot initiative.
Freedom means different thingsdepending on who defines it, but
in cannabis, Florida's votersmight finally get to define it
for themselves.
(05:05):
Anyways, after stumblingthrough that, let me just get to
the good part of the show andbring on our guest.
Our guest today is Dr.
Ruth Fisher, co-founder of CANDynamics, an economist, systems
modeler, and educator who helpsdecode how cannabis as both a
medicine and a market createsreal value.
(05:26):
Ruth's work bridges theeconomics, technology, and
biology, modeling how laws,culture, and infrastructure
interact to shape cannabisoutcomes.
She's also one of the fewvoices mapping the global patent
landscape in cannabis and hemp,revealing where innovation is
actually happening.
(05:47):
So, Ruth, welcome to the show.
How are you doing today?
Dr. Ruth Fisher (05:51):
Thank you for having me here.
I'm I'm doing wonderful.
And as you were talking, I wasthinking that it's never a dull
day in cannabis, is it?
Ben Larson (06:02):
No, no, it's it's persistent entertainment.
Uh I'm I'm I'm approaching I'mapproaching my 10-year
anniversary in the industry, andI will say there has never been
a dull moment.
In fact, if I go two weeks withsomewhat normalcy, I start to
get nervous.
It's like it maybe it's thatstoic and me it's like, oh,
(06:22):
something's gonna go wrong.
I have to like figure out likewhat's next, what's what bad can
happen.
Dr. Ruth Fisher (06:27):
Seriously, yeah, it's one of the most
dynamic industries I've everseen.
And the you know, the fact thatwe have the legal markets
rolling out in different states,and then you know, the hemp and
the the illicit markets andeverything else, it's just
there's always so much going on.
Ben Larson (06:47):
Yeah, yeah.
Well, and you have a verydiverse background.
I was reading through it,economists, you're you're
looking up patents, and and andthe reason we have you on the
show is because you publishedthis great paper where you had
downloaded over 10,000 cannabispatents and started kind of
sorting through it to try to getan understanding of the
(07:08):
landscape of the patent worldfor cannabis, which I think is
uh largely unknown.
Like we we have some patents,but like I didn't realize how
broad the patent brought broaderportfolio of cannabis patents
was until I saw your report.
And so, how does an economistuh go on a massive patent hunt
(07:31):
and trying to map out the entirepatent world for the cannabis
industry?
Dr. Ruth Fisher (07:36):
That's a great question.
So I had kind of in my formerpre-cannabis life uh spent a lot
of time with patents andtechnology and licensing and
been in that world.
And several years ago, I haddone an earlier analysis of
patents in cannabis.
And so I knew that there atthat time I had managed to find
(07:56):
several hundred or more.
And more recently, with thetalk of uh rescheduling to
schedule three, you have youknow that issue of research in
cannabis.
And a lot of people are saying,well, there's really been no
research in cannabis because ofall the schedule one
restrictions.
And um, I was talking with someother people and they said,
(08:19):
yeah, there really is, you know,very little research and
there's you know no patentactivity.
I said, Well, that's not infact true.
There is are actually patents,and so I decided to update the
analysis and went in and I wasdoing the analysis, and this is
kind of in the midst of all theschedule three uh rescheduling
discussions, and people and sothe topic of patents came up,
(08:43):
and I would say, you know, howmany patents do you do you think
there are?
And people would say, Well,there are none at schedule one,
or you know, some people say,Well, almost none because it's
schedule one.
I said, Well, how many do youthink?
Take a guess.
And they would say, I don'tknow, 50, 100, maybe 200.
Now, I went to the US PTO,that's a US US patent and
(09:05):
trademark office.
That's you know, the the officethat issues the patents, and
just to clarify, anyone whowants to protect an invention
while engaging in activity inthe US markets needs to own a
patent if they want to be ableto, you know, have patent
protection on that entity.
So there's US companies, and ifyou're foreign companies
(09:29):
selling products in the USmarket, you also need a patent.
So if you're like Toyota andyou're selling your Toyota cars,
that's a Japanese company, butthey're competing in the US
market, so they need to have apatent.
So you'll have Japanesecompanies holding patents and
American companies, Ford and GM,holding patents.
So it's the same thing foranything.
So um I went to the US PTOtrademark, uh USPTO uh database
(09:55):
and did a I wanted a very narrowsearch for what I was doing.
So I did a very narrow search,and lo and behold, up came
roughly 12,000 or so patents formy keyword search.
And the the database would letme download 10,000 patents.
They put a limit on it.
(10:15):
So I downloaded those 10,000patents and worked through them.
Um, but that's kind of how Igot into that venture.
Um, and when I tell people, youknow, no, there's actually like
10,000 patents out there, it'sjust it's it's mind-boggling and
it's very surprising to people.
Ben Larson (10:34):
I mean, what also might be surprising to people,
basically anything sounds likeit might be surprising if people
believe there's only 50 to 100,but of those 50 to 100 or
10,000, like the US governmentactually holds cannabis patents
as well.
And so I'm curious, you saidsurprising, as you were going
through this list of patentholders.
What did surprise you?
(10:55):
Like, who's holding a lot ofpatents?
Like, where you know, whattypes of companies are holding
these patents?
Dr. Ruth Fisher (11:02):
Wow.
Um, so uh the database containsissued patents, and I was
interested in active patents,and I started reading, and one
of the things that surprised meis I'm reading through, and when
you're doing a patent, it'skind of like any formal uh uh
(11:25):
study that you publish, isgenerally you have to say, okay,
I'm doing a study on this, andhere's what other people are
doing in this general area.
Here's why what I'm doing isdifferent from what they've
done.
And so there's a lot of patentsout there.
Well, they where, especially inthe medical area, where they
say, Well, you know, I'm I'mdealing with a pain product and
(11:48):
cannabis is out there and it'sused for pain, but I'm not I'm
not doing a cannabis approach,I'm doing something else, but
cannabis is there, um, it hasproblems, a lot of, you know,
the psychoactivity um is is oneof the big problems, but they're
doing something else.
And so I weeded out a lot ofpatents that weren't directly
(12:10):
relevant because they werementioning cannabis as being in
the prior art, but not in theactual invention.
And so, kind of one of thethings that surprised me off the
bat is how much recognitionthere is out there of cannabis.
And this is, you know, in themedical area, most of these are
looking at therapeutics.
(12:32):
So when you're talking againabout schedule three, and people
are saying, well, you know,schedule three would be great
because all of us it wouldunleash the ability to do
research, it would make it a loteasier.
And while it would remove somehurdles, there seems to be a
misnomer that there hasn't beenany research.
And there's actually been avast amount of research in, you
(12:53):
know, where they're actuallyresearching, they're inventing
in cannabis, but also they'rerecognizing that cannabis is out
there and doing something kindof peripheral or tangential.
So that was kind of one of thebig primary things that I
learned.
Um as far as the that wasn'tdirectly relevant to the
question you asked, um forcountry-wise, um I I was looking
(13:20):
at at patents where if uh youhave like three or more patents
because it's a ton of one-offs,and I couldn't I couldn't get to
all those.
But if you look at um companiesthat hold at least three
patents, there are roughly 30countries holding patents in the
US patent and trademark office.
(13:42):
And that I found reallysurprising.
Company countries like SaudiArabia, uh, which was
interesting.
Ben Larson (13:50):
That is very interesting.
Dr. Ruth Fisher (13:53):
Um, of course, New Zealand, Australia, um, just
all over the world, all overthe world.
And so that was that was reallyinteresting.
Now you have a lot of those areresearch institutions, a lot of
universities.
Universities do a lot ofresearch and they often serve as
pipelines for pharmaceuticalcompanies.
(14:13):
So they're developing the earlystage research and then they
license it to pharmaceuticalcompanies.
That was very interesting.
As you said, the U.S.
government through um theUnited States Navy, the United
States Army, um, Department ofHealth, they hold a lot of
different patents.
And that was also veryinteresting, especially, you
(14:34):
know, as we know that it'sschedule one.
It's like, okay, either eithercannabis is useful, in which
case it shouldn't be scheduleone, or it's not useful and you
shouldn't have patents.
Um that was and then thevariety of different uh
industries represented was alsovery surprising.
Um I was interested in thepharma, um, who, which of the
(15:00):
pharmaceutical companies?
Um it turns out that a lot oftraditional pharmaceutical
companies have patents incannabis.
That was very interesting.
You also have a lot of newpharmaceuticals, I call them
cannabis pharmaceuticalcompanies.
So they're kind of going theFDA route, or they're acting
like a traditionalpharmaceutical company, but they
(15:22):
were founded to developcannabis technologies.
Ben Larson (15:27):
So this is like earlier versions of like GW
Pharma or I know Charlotte'sWebb recently started pursuing
their medicine.
Yeah.
Dr. Ruth Fisher (15:36):
Yeah, there's an Israeli company called
Buzzlet, I think, uh, which is acool name.
And there's also medical devicecompanies.
So for like inhalers uhvaporizers and stuff, um, for
their, I would, as I said,medical device companies.
Um and so there's there'scannabis pharma, there's
(15:57):
traditional pharma, there'sobviously the tobacco companies,
um, British American tobaccoand Philip Morris hold a lot of
patents in uh vapingtechnologies, um products for
vaping uh tech uh vapingcannabis.
Um you have uh the largestpatent holder is a company
(16:19):
called BASF, and that's a bigGerman industrial company.
They hold 140 patents, and mostof that is in cultivation.
And so they're looking atincreasing plant yields, at um
gene splicing, so honing kind ofwhat you're gonna end up
(16:39):
growing, um pesticides andfungus control.
Now, a lot of thosetechnologies that they're
developing um are relevant forcannabis, but also many other
different types of crops.
Ben Larson (16:53):
Right.
Dr. Ruth Fisher (16:54):
But they hold a lot.
Um, and you have Bayer, whichis that's actually a big
conglomerate, and they do holdmedical patents, but they also
hold a lot in cultivation and Ibelieve uh pesticides.
And so it's it was interestingto me that you had a lot of
patents in the area ofcultivation, which presumably is
(17:16):
creating all the raw materials,presumably for pharmaceutical
companies.
Ben Larson (17:22):
So a lot of those kind of seem almost obvious.
Yeah, Philip Morris havinghappy having vaporizer, they had
the icos and and and all thatkind of stuff anyway.
So it's like, okay, it's not afar leap.
But they're kind of also likesitting out on the periphery.
Like, I haven't heard of peopleenforcing patents on on the
(17:44):
industry, and so that eithermeans people aren't aren't
infringing them or they're justlike not really caring.
And how should we think aboutpatents?
Like, if we're creating acompany and doing things, how
deeply should we be out there,you know, investigating what
patents are owned and not beingused in the industry?
(18:04):
Maybe we should be going outsearching like all these alcohol
companies and and and what haveyou, and see like, are they
forging ahead and creatingpatents around things that they
have no intention of using untilfar after legalization?
And at that point, is theresome sort of statute of
limitations or something?
Dr. Ruth Fisher (18:22):
That is a phenomenal question.
That's a really good question.
I hadn't really thought aboutthat, but so there's a limp,
there's an age limit on thepatents, and they expire after
roughly 30 years, I believe.
Um, that's changed a bit overtime.
My pre-cannabis life, I livedin Silicon Valley and it was in
the technology world, andobviously patents play a huge
(18:44):
role there.
And anyone who's who's doinganything is looking at patents
and infringing.
Um, and if you're doing astartup and you want to get VC
money, and in cannabis, it'sreally hard to get funding.
Uh, you can't go to the bankand get a loan.
And so you're you're generallygetting funding from, say, a VC,
(19:04):
a venture capitalist.
And one of the key things thatventure capitalists like, and
especially in you know,technology companies, if if
you're developing IP, is theywant a patent.
And so there's, you know,there's a tendency to get
patents.
Um, I will say that regardlessof what industry you're in, the
vast majority of patents neverhave any creating any value.
(19:29):
And so it's only a maybe acouple of percent that are even
kind of start to go down thatlicensing or development or
value process.
And even those, um, if you lookat the patents being licensed
and licensed, a lot of thosenever actually generate any
money because the uh the failurerate for startups is really
(19:51):
high.
Um, what you're doing is you'recreating a fence, you know,
with a patent.
Um the idea that there hasn'tbeen much any or much litigation
in cannabis um has beeninteresting to me from the
beginning, and that's patents orany other area.
(20:11):
And I think the the lawsuitsare coming.
Ben Larson (20:14):
Um, interesting.
Dr. Ruth Fisher (20:16):
And I think that when there's part of the
problem is cannabis federally isstill Schedule One.
And so as far as thegovernment's concerned, it's
illegal.
And they're actually um, so theshort answer is there have been
a couple of lawsuits, and thefirst one I could find was 2017
or 18.
There were uh like four suitsthat I could find that settled,
(20:40):
these are patent infringementsuits, so we don't really know
anything about them.
Um what an area of formulation.
One company was suing anothercompany, and they ended up going
bankrupt before the anythingwas resolved.
Um, yeah, and that happens alot in cannabis.
Ben Larson (20:57):
Um I was gonna say that's like not only the
litigation effort, but whypeople don't have strong patent
portfolios.
So you used kind of the fenceas an analogy just a minute ago,
and also mentioned that there'sa lot of like singular patents,
and like when you think ofpatents and you get one, it's
almost like you're putting asingle fence post in the ground.
(21:20):
Yeah.
And without the portfolio work,you know, you haven't created a
fence until you have multiple,right?
Yeah, you have one post, andwhich is pretty easy to work
around most of the time.
What have been yourobservations about companies
actually building a strongpatent strategy versus just oh
hey, we got a patent around ourtechnology?
Dr. Ruth Fisher (21:43):
In patent lingo, they call them patent
thickets.
And so what you want to do isyou want to have a bunch of
patents, you know, all aroundthe same area.
Because if you're sued forpatent infringement, the first
thing you do is you challengethe patent that you're accused
of infringing.
So you say, Well, I don't thinkyour patent's valid.
And so now the patent needs toundergo examination.
(22:07):
And the thing that's reallyimportant to understand is just
because a patent was issueddoesn't necessarily mean it's
valid.
Ben Larson (22:13):
Do you have a rough percentage of patents that do
get challenged?
Dr. Ruth Fisher (22:17):
And well, that's every patent that's
infringed is an automaticcountersuit is to invalidate it.
And you can you know, then youso you require to undergo the
require the patent holder toundergo an evaluation of the
patent, and a lot of them arethrown out, or specific claims
are thrown out, and so you get amuch weaker position.
(22:37):
And yeah, so part of theproblem, and I I've given a lot
of talks on patent valuation,and the scary thing about a
patent is it's only valuable ifyou're able to enforce it.
Um, I was giving a talk um longtime ago to a group of most of
the people in the audience werestartup people, and I gave the
(22:59):
talk on how to value a patent,and one guy raises a hand, he
says, Yeah, he says, Microsoft'sinfringing my patent, and I
sent them a cease and desistletter, and they said, So sue
us.
And well, what are you gonnado?
And it's kind of like that casethat I mentioned where that the
company went bankrupt, is weknow how shaky the finances of
(23:21):
so many cannabis companies are.
That it's not, I mean, it'sprobably a very usual situation
in cannabis, and I'veencountered it, where if you
have any sort of litigationgoing on, you have one powerful
company and one weak company,and the powerful company can
just wait out the weak companyuntil they go bankrupt and the
(23:42):
whole thing goes away, you know?
And the same thing could happenwith patents.
And so uh having a patent issexy, and you can tell people I
have a patent and it's reallycool, it's expensive to get and
you need to enforce it,otherwise, what good is having
it?
And that's kind of the trickhere.
So I would tell people it'sagain, it's the the the
(24:03):
strongest or one of the mostimportant reasons to get a
patent is to be able to getfunding.
So whether or not it's reallyvalid, um you want to have it to
be able to get funding.
Ben Larson (24:17):
I I remember was it 2018?
I I ran into John Cooper, whois the the founder and CEO of of
Ebu.
Um and I ran into him at MJ Bizright after they had sold to
Canopy Growth for like I don'tknow if it was like 300 million
or 400 million dollars, which isa lot, it was a lot of money
(24:39):
that was in the very exuberantphase of cannabis.
And uh he was telling me thatthey had built this pretty
radical patent portfolio, but itwas getting to the point where
they couldn't even afford tomanage the portfolio, defend it.
And so they it they kind ofthreaded a needle and got really
lucky and sold right at theright time.
Where someone who was wellcapitalized saw this patent
(25:02):
portfolio and be like, oh, wecan defend that, and that's
valuable to us.
But for the startup, they werelike running off a cliff because
they didn't have the capital topay all the legal expenses.
Yeah, that got me reallyexcited about patents, but also
it's just like, oh yeah, carefulabout how far you extend
yourself when you're a smallcompany.
Dr. Ruth Fisher (25:20):
It's I mean, the question of do you patent
your technology when you'restartup and you're you know,
you're bootstrapping and don'thave a lot of money to spend,
that's a really difficultposition to be in.
And some industry, someindustries you need the patents
to be able to play, and otherindustries you don't.
And I suspect there will beareas, and there's gonna be a
(25:42):
lot of um areas challenged.
And I mean, in particular,there's a lot of patents on
plants.
Can't coming up with aspecific, well, my plant grows,
I don't know, C B high C B C andC BG, or I don't know what, or
you know, really high THC orwhatever.
(26:03):
But I mean, if you go into thepatent code, you know, one of
the things they say is you can'tpatent natural substances.
Now, if you if you get the theplant to be a very, you know,
have a very sp specific geneticmakeup, does that mean that you
can patent it?
I don't know.
And I mean, a lot of peoplespend a lot of resources
(26:24):
patenting plants, but there'sbeen no litigation.
So uh one of the things I wasgonna say is it's kind of funny
because um one of the defensesis if someone's accused of
infringing, one of the firstthings they say is, Well, you
can't sue me because cannabisisn't legal.
So they're kind of trying tohave their cake and eat it too.
(26:44):
And then that's been thrownout.
That hasn't worked.
But I read that in a couple ofthe cases where they allege that
as a defense.
Ben Larson (26:53):
So you bring up the potential challenges around
patenting around a plant, likean organic organism, uh, which
leads me to start thinking aboutsynthetics, which is a very hot
topic depending on what realmof cannabis or hemp you're
you're sitting in.
Uh, what did you see as far assynthetics go?
How are different playersthinking about synthetics for
(27:17):
you know, like pharmaceuticalcompanies?
Are they building up these likesynthetic portfolios?
And I know other companies inthe cannabis and hemp industry
are probably doing the same, butmaybe for for different
purposes or differentmotivators.
Uh, what how are you thinkingabout that that side of the
plant that, or not not the plantnecessarily, but uh the
(27:38):
synthetic cannabinoid uh world?
Dr. Ruth Fisher (27:40):
I love that question.
I the topic of synthetics isreally fascinating to me and
it's multifaceted.
Um, when I first came in and Iwas looking at the the
pharmaceutical patents or themedical patents, what I had
assumed would happen would bethat the traditional pharma
companies would be dominatingthe patent holdings and they
(28:02):
would be doing syntheticcannabinoids.
So um synthetics are greatbecause you can make them in a
lab and you can make themperfectly consistent
consistently at volume, which iskind of what the whole FDA
approval process has beendesigned around.
And I assume that that would bethe case, and that's what where
the majority of patents wouldbe.
(28:23):
Um it turns out that that wasnot the case.
It turns out that actualcannabinoids, and they use it,
it's you know, some patents citespecifically therapeutics
involving THC, CBD, CBG, butmostly THC, um, or cannabinoids,
(28:44):
which I take to be phytoderived, but they could totally
a synthetic.
It turns out that theplant-based patents outweigh the
synthetic-based patents.
And so kind of this is onerealm of the synthetics.
And what was interesting to meis it's the traditional pharma
(29:05):
companies that are doing thesynthetics.
And as I mentioned, this newpharma cannabis at a group of
companies, those tend to bedoing the phyto-based.
So GW, they're playing with theactual plant molecules,
whereas, say Synophi or GLACSOare dealing with synthetics.
(29:25):
So I thought that was reallyinteresting.
Ben Larson (29:27):
Yeah.
Dr. Ruth Fisher (29:27):
You have the conversion cannabinoids, which
are also synthetic orsemi-synthetic.
And I was very interested inwhether or not that was a big
patent area.
That's the, you know, all theconverting of CBD to delta nine
and delta eight.
There's a lot of patents inthat area.
I have no idea how those aregoing to be treated.
And then there was another areaI was really interested in, and
(29:49):
there's a number of uh patentsin that area, and that's using
uh they're synthesizingcannabinoids from, say, yeast or
aldo.
Or non-canvas plants.
And so they're they'reco-opting, say, yeast, which is
a natural factory.
It turns out it's the structureof THC is is difficult to copy.
(30:14):
And if you take a naturalsource and have the natural
source make it, it might beeasier than making it say from
scratch in a lab.
So they're taking yeast andalgae and other living organisms
and they're feeding in rawmaterials and having them output
cannabinoids.
I don't have no idea how youtreat those.
Ben Larson (30:34):
Yeah, it's been a complicated conversation.
I mean, I've been looking atthese alternative methods of
cannabinoid development, let'scall it, uh, since I think 2018.
And I always had this question.
We always talk about the thesource of the cannabinoids.
Like, well, what if the sourceisn't a plant?
Um, which after spending sometime on the hill and at some of
(30:57):
the state capitals, I don't knowif anyone is ready to have that
conversation.
Like, I'm I'm people are stillasking what the difference
between THC and CBD are.
Let's take it back to theplant.
We got a we got a question herefrom Dr.
Jaehan Marco.
Uh, thanks for watching,Jayhan.
If I have a variety, uh, saygreen crack, how can I protect
(31:19):
that reputation from beingundermined uh to inferior green
crack imitators?
And I remember this questioncoming up long ago when we talk
about genetic drift and all thatkind of stuff.
Like blue dream was all therage at one point, and then it
became very clear that bluedream from one dispensary in the
Bay Area was very differentfrom a blue dream just down in
(31:42):
you know LA.
And so is there a way to belike, this actually is a really
great strain and in how and andyou can protect that cannabinoid
profile.
Is it protecting the profile oris it like the genetics that
you actually have to like refineand then create some level of
robustness so that it'srepeatable?
Dr. Ruth Fisher (32:01):
You know, if you're talking green, uh
something like green crack, andlet's just call it that, um,
that's what I'm envisioning, youknow, these plant patents are.
And the problem is the problemthat you have with cannabis, as
we know, is you have thegenotype or the genetic profile,
and then you have thephenotype, what ends up
(32:22):
happening, which is shaped bythe environment.
So you can patent the genetics,but that's not the same thing
as what it actually grows into.
Ben Larson (32:31):
Right.
Right.
Dr. Ruth Fisher (32:32):
And that's and that's really hard to control.
And when you put all of ittogether, it makes it really
messy.
And I mean, that's a greatquestion.
And a lot I I know people aretrying to figure out, well, how
exactly do you now?
It's kind of moving in theother direction.
If you take say blue dream, andif you look at say 500 samples
(32:52):
of blue dream, it's like, well,will the real blue dream please
stand up?
You know?
But if you're starting in theother direction saying, okay, I
have this one, how do I protectit?
It's it's really hard.
Um, again, it kind of comesback to the real difficulty of
trying to enforce a patent,which is, I mean, are you gonna
send people out to every farm,you know, or or every retailer
(33:16):
who's selling it or, you know,brand or whatever?
It's and then you need to, Idon't know, you would need to, I
guess this would be interestingat some point, it maybe it'll
be proven, is you need toestablish that the infringing
product uh product issubstantially similar.
Ben Larson (33:35):
Yeah.
Dr. Ruth Fisher (33:36):
Now, substantially similar, or it was
made in a substantially similarway.
And that's I believe that's theterminology used, and that's
not objective.
You know, how do you go aboutproving?
And I've thought about thisbefore, if there's a lot of
different compounds and you'relooking at one sample here and
(33:57):
one sample here, and it's kindof, you know, there's a bunch of
different things and a bunch ofdifferent things, how much
variation in each of thosedifferent, you know, the
cannabinoids and the terpenes.
Well, how do you determine thatit's substantially similar?
Or the flip side, is there youknow, different enough?
How do you define that?
Ben Larson (34:14):
So in order to it's interesting because, like, on
the on the trademark side, Ithink you can use like
terminology like confusinglysimilar, right?
And and like you can measurethat by just putting it in front
of people and see if they'reconfused, right?
But if it's like an actualtechnology, it's a little bit
harder, which also like thinkingabout trademarks, like say you
(34:35):
did build a patent around greencrack.
I mean, this industry has justproven time and time again that
people are not afraid toinfringe until they're attacked,
and we get back to the lack,lack of capital aspect and the
ability to enforce force thesethings.
There will be a time wherepeople do have the resources and
(34:55):
initiative to start enforcingpatents, right?
Do you is there a point in timeor regulation where you believe
that will happen and thatcompanies will just start
getting knocked out because ofpatent enforcement?
Dr. Ruth Fisher (35:11):
I think that what the lawsuits are coming,
and I think that if you get alawsuit with a big damages
settlement, that that's gonnaincentivize a lot of other
attorneys to come in and takecases on contingency.
And I think the dominoes aregonna start to fall.
(35:31):
And I think that once thathappens, and I think that that's
I mean, you talk about like thetesting fraud, similar there,
um, and just kind of theproducts not living up to what
they're supposed to be doing.
Um, you know, someone's gonnadie because of a, you know, a
moldy product or something, andsomeone's gonna win a very large
(35:53):
lawsuit, and that's gonna bringin a lot of attorneys and
contingency, and they're gonnastart suing.
And then you're, you know,there's gonna be, I think, a
before period and an afterperiod with a pretty clear line
of okay, here's when the lawstarted being enforced.
Because you, I mean, what'sgoing on in cannabis wouldn't
exist in any other industrybecause there would be so many
(36:14):
lawsuits that would haveprevented it.
And I don't know why, but forsome reason in cannabis that
isn't happening, although it'sstarting.
Ben Larson (36:23):
Can we dive into damages a little bit?
Because I I imagine as abusiness owner, at some point
someone's gonna send mesomething and be like, you owe
me 80 bajillion dollars, and I'mlike, that's unreasonable.
And in some cases, maybe theydo want 80 bajillion dollars,
but maybe they'll take asettlement.
But like, I don't want to givemore than than what's due.
(36:45):
And so, like, how shouldbusiness owners, whether they're
on the receiving end or theattacking end of one of these
cases, like, how should they bethinking about damages?
And then how do the courtsthink about damages when it
actually comes to awardingsomeone for patent infringement?
Dr. Ruth Fisher (37:03):
So um, if you're talking about patent
infringement, then so supposesomeone infringes, and first of
all, there have to be damages,and you have to establish
damages in order to be able towin.
Ben Larson (37:16):
So you can damage damages largely meaning like
lost revenue.
Dr. Ruth Fisher (37:20):
So this is what I was gonna get into.
Um, so you sue for infringementand so or for damages, and
there was a case that came outrecently where someone sued and
it was uh THC fraud, where youknow the labeled contents was I
don't know, hundred 150% and theactual content was like 15%.
(37:42):
And the guy sued and he said,Well, you misled me.
And the question there is,well, what are the damages?
And he said, Well, I could havebeen harmed or something, and
that's you can't get damages forthat because there's no real
you need to say, okay, what'sthe harm?
And you need to be able toreasonably quantify that harm.
(38:03):
And if you can't get areasonably, you know, if it's
too speculative, then that won'twork.
And so you need to be able todefine clearly what the damage
is and have be able toreasonably estimate those.
And in in in patentinfringement, there's two
different types of damages.
So if you can think about youhave an invention and there's
(38:27):
two ways to commercialize it.
One, you can go out there andyou can build a business around
it and you can earn money, oryou can license it to someone
else and have them, you know,build and sell the technology,
and then they will pay you aroyalty.
It's usually based on a percentof revenues, and there's, you
know, some percent, maybe fivepercent of revenues.
(38:47):
So they license your extractiontechnology, they make a million
dollars in extractions, theyowe you 10%, so they pay you
$100,000.
So a royalty is generally lowerthan a profit number because
profits generally tend to be say20%, 30%, whereas royalties
(39:08):
tend to be say five percent.
And a royalty is easier to getthan an actual profit.
And that's kind of why thenumbers are that way.
So if your patent is infringedand you say, Well, I you you
hurt me, I I lost money.
The if you can prove that thatthat you have, say, an
(39:28):
extraction technology andsomeone else infringed on your
technology on your patent andthey made a sale that you would
have made, so they got thoseprofits that you would have
made, then you need to establishthat you actually could have
and would have made or couldhave made those those uh
profits.
So for example, if you're acompany and you're operating in
(39:52):
California and you're doing yourextraction business in
California and that's all youroperations are, and someone say
in Maine or or Florida or NewYork or whatever copies your
invention and sells it withinNew York, you can't the only way
that you can get lost profitsis if you establish that you
would have made those sales inNew York.
(40:12):
Now, if you don't have anysales guys in New York and you
don't have any operations in NewYork, then you wouldn't have
made those sales.
You can't establish that youwould have made them, in which
case you get a reasonableroyalty, not lost profits.
Right.
And so to determine, well,what's that number?
Is it 5%?
Is it 10%?
Generally, there's a couple ofdifferent things that you need
(40:34):
to look at.
Um, one of the big things iswhat is what is the industry
standard?
And there tend to be industrystandards in cannabis.
There's probably, we haven'tgotten to the point, probably,
because there is no licensingreally, I don't think.
Um, but you can go into otherindustries and say, well, and in
another, like you have extractsin other industries, and so
(40:56):
what are the royalties they paythere?
And you look at kind of similarsit situations.
Another thing that's really,really, really important for
people to understand is if theyhave IP, any sort of
intellectual property thatthey're trying to protect, they
need to be able to establishthat they're taking reasonable
(41:16):
means to protect that property.
So if they're like sharing thetheir secret sauce, you know, if
they're posting it on theinternet and they're telling all
their friends and neighbors,and then later they came back
and say, well, that was asecret.
It's like, well, if it was asecret, why are you posting it
on the internet?
And you're less likely to getdamages.
On the other hand, if you canshow that, well, you keep the
(41:38):
formula locked in a safe andonly a couple of people have
access to that, then the courtswill say, Well, you were really
trying to protect it.
You, you know, you were makingreasonable efforts to protect
it.
So you wouldn't have been freeto give it out or license it.
So your damages will be higher.
So that's kind of an importantthing that people with
(41:59):
technology can do.
And, you know, in SiliconValley, you have all the tech
people there, they all havetheir notebooks where they're
documenting things to establishthat they were the first to do
it, but also they'reestablishing that they're taking
taking reasonable means toprotect their information from
other people.
Ben Larson (42:17):
I'm gonna ask one kind of selfish question because
I'm the host and I can do thatbefore I ask the the most
logical next question, andthat's regarding kind of like my
line of business, right?
So we've been building out youknow a patent portfolio just
with the work that we've done inliquid emulsions and that kind
of stuff.
And emulsion is really like aninteresting category in of its
(42:39):
own because not only is itapplicable to to beverages and
creating stable systems, um, butit's also a way to create
bioavailability for you know asan ingredient.
And so I'm curious, what didyou see in your research
regarding the realm of emulsionsystems and and kind of other
infusion technology?
And is that a robust part ofthe broader ecosystem of patents
(43:04):
out there?
Dr. Ruth Fisher (43:05):
So I would I would classify those as delivery
patents because it's a it's notjust you know patenting like a
formulation.
You're saying I'm delivering itsay in a beverage.
And I was I was very and Iseparated out the delivery, uh,
what I call delivery patentsbecause that's a big area of
interest of mine.
And so there's that was thesecond biggest area.
(43:28):
There's a lot of patents anddifferent delivery mechanisms,
say topicals.
Um, and I was I subdivided thedelivery mechanisms into two
groups, either oral delivery ornot oral delivery.
And I'm kind of keeping yoursfor last.
The non-oral delivery, there'smost in oral.
In non-oral, the biggest istopical by far.
(43:51):
And then so uh second and thirdto topical is transdermal in
patches, which are all topical.
So those are the biggest fornon-oral.
For oral, you have generaloral, they say oral delivery,
but then the water, the soluble,the emulsions, the um
(44:15):
beverages, you have you know, alot of coffee.
Um, but the generic beveragesoluble and emulsion uh
technologies is a very heavyarea of patents.
So there's a lot going onthere.
And that's I mean, that'sfundamental to being able to
(44:35):
deliver cannabis, as you said,you know, consistently with high
bioavailability.
Ben Larson (44:42):
Yeah, interesting.
One of the gating factors herethat keeps arising is that you
know it's coming, cannabishasn't been there yet, there
hasn't been a lot of funding.
Let's turn our lens away frompatents for a second, just get
your perspective on where theindustry is at.
What are you worried about?
What are you optimistic about?
Just about the state of theindustry and us getting to this
(45:05):
kind of legitimate world where,you know, for better or for
worse, there's like patentlitigation and all that kind of
stuff happening, and people areactually leveraging the the
value of what they've created.
Dr. Ruth Fisher (45:16):
I'm start with the optimism.
I'm very optimistic about theproduct and the plan.
And, you know, the mess ofhemp, whether you love it or
hate it, shows that there's thatthe speed at which it's growing
and the enormous size of themarket shows that this is a
product that people want.
And, you know, if it's if it'savailable at low prices, there's
(45:40):
huge demand.
Uh, and I think that thepotential there is enormous.
And um, I'm a technology geekand I've been watching the
technologies being developed atevery stage of the supply chain.
And it's what I would callglorious.
There's so much innovationthere.
And it's just it's kind ofsetting up for the future of
(46:03):
this plant well into the future.
And what's so amazing too isall the innovations they're
being developed for cannabisbecause cannabis is a relatively
high value product.
But so many of the technologiesbeing developed for cannabis
will have applications for otherproducts and industries as
well.
So, for example, all theextraction that's not just, you
(46:24):
know, applicable to cannabis,it's applicable to any herbal or
you know, plant or anythingelse.
Um, and so the moving forward,the diversity and the variety of
cannabis products has justtremendous potential.
What I worry about is theregulatory environment.
(46:46):
And the the problem withcannabis is it's, I mean, it's I
love complexity.
Uh, I thrive in complexity, andcannabis is more complex than
anything I've ever seen beforein so many different ways.
Everything about cannabis iscomplex.
You know, it's it's the plantand all its compounds, it's the
way, you know, theirendocannabinoid system and the
(47:08):
way that they process it, it'sthe regulatory environment, it's
the cultural environment, youknow, it's the market
environment.
It's just there's so muchcomplexity and nuance, and it
saddens me that the peoplemaking all the laws and
regulations seem to have solittle understanding, and they
keep styming the potential.
(47:29):
So that frustrates me.
Ben Larson (47:31):
It is interesting, and we lament this almost every
episode.
It's just it doesn't seem thatthere's a large learning cycle
going on from year to year, fromnew market to new market.
And it seems like we make a lotof the same mistakes that
history repeats itself everytime, and sometimes there's new
mistakes like we were talkingabout off offline.
(47:53):
It's just like it's likethey're coming up with new
innovative ways to make mistakesevery every year.
Dr. Ruth Fisher (47:59):
Well, it's it's so funny because I was watching
Californian, Californians justmagnificently kilt cannabis, and
it it's just I mean, it's beenso phenomenal, and I just I
couldn't imagine that anyonecould potentially top that.
And then New York came along.
Ben Larson (48:14):
What's I mean, hopefully this isn't too loaded
of a question, and I swear,folks, we didn't talk about this
beforehand, but Ruth, like,what's your perspective on on
what's been happening with thehemp cannabinoid market and how
that's been influencing thetrajectory of the kind of the
whole industry and plant?
Dr. Ruth Fisher (48:31):
That's a very complicated area.
Um I think it's it shows youthe beauty of human ingenuity
and the ability of people tomaneuver around any roadblock in
their uh in their way.
Um, I think it's it's it'scomplicated.
(48:53):
I personally I'm very much fordescheduling and to combining
all cannabis together under asingle framework and just
legalize the whole thing.
And I think that wouldeliminate a huge portion of the
problems that we're having.
Ben Larson (49:06):
Yeah.
Dr. Ruth Fisher (49:06):
Um I think it's unfortunate that within the
environment, there's certainplayers who you have regulators
who don't understand what'sgoing on.
Um, as I said, and you have acouple of different actors out
there who are doing things thatare not helping the industry at
all.
They're helping themselves kindof at the expense of everyone
(49:27):
else.
And just a lot of bad activitywhere, you know, we as an
industry need to do better andwe need to kind of show the rest
of the world that, you know,we're willing to step up and do
what we need, like have testingand have age gating, um, and you
know, have proper labeling andtransparency.
(49:47):
Um, and I think a lot of peoplehave been trying to do that.
They've been stymied forvarious reasons.
But again, I think that, youknow, we should just legalize it
already.
Um, and that would solve a lotof the problems.
Ben Larson (50:00):
Amen.
Amen.
A very diplomatic answer.
Thank you, Ruth.
All right.
Well, this has been an amazing,amazing conversation.
I really appreciate you takingthe time today uh to just kind
of unpack uh patents and allthat kind of stuff.
But I know there's a lot moreto your area of expertise and in
(50:20):
the things that you getyourself involved in.
And so now that it's time forour our last call, this is an
opportunity that we typicallygive our guests an opportunity
to give a last shout out, a callto action, whatever it is,
cannabis or otherwise.
And so, what did I not ask you?
What do you want to tell ouraudience?
Dr. Ruth Fisher (50:43):
I'll do a shameless book plug.
Uh, I wrote a book.
Yeah, the Medical CannabisPrimer.
Um, so that's available andit's on our website,
medicalcannabusprimer.com orAmazon, but less shamelessly,
I'm available on LinkedIn.
Um, so I love meeting newpeople.
Uh, please reach out andcontact me, and I'd love to hear
(51:05):
about you and what you'redoing.
Ben Larson (51:06):
Amazing.
Amazing.
Dr.
Ruth Fisher from Quanta and CanDynamics.
Thank you so much for spendingthe past hour with us.
You're just a wealth ofinformation.
Really appreciate you spendingthe time.
Dr. Ruth Fisher (51:19):
Thank you for such a very interesting uh and
delightful conversation.
Thank you for having me.
Ben Larson (51:24):
Amazing.
Well, we'll talk to you soon.
All right, folks, what do youthink?
Do you have your patents alltightened up?
Are you ready to defend them?
Are you ready to defendyourself if someone comes at you
with a patent?
Uh call Ruth if you need somehelp.
If stoicism teaches usanything, control what you can.
Ruth reminds us thatunderstanding the world that
(51:48):
you're operating is within yourcontrol.
So please do that.
Thank you for those leavingcomments and engaging Scott
Wessler, Jehan Marku, and allthe rest.
Thank you, Bertosa andWolfmeyer, our team members for
the support, and of course, ourproducer, Eric Rossetti.
If you've enjoyed this episode,please drop a review on Apple
(52:10):
Podcasts, Spotify, or whereveryou listen to your podcasts.
It helps us be found.
Things are looking up, but wewant it to grow more and more
and more.
Thank you, thank you, thankyou.
As always, folks, stay curious,stay informed, and keep your
spirits high.
Until next time, that's theshow.
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