A Trademark can Vary

Video Transcribed: Oklahoma Attorney Isaiah N. Brydie, Esq. coming at you with another video and this video is going to be all about medical marijuana businesses and trademarks. So, intellectual property as a general matter is something that’s really, really an evolving industry.

I’m going to be talking to you specifically about trademarks. I am not qualified to talk about patents even though a lot of you businesses should have intellectual property that has the potential of being patented and that’ll be another conversation. This conversation is all about trademarks.

So basically, what is a trademark? A trademark is either is a mark, so think of either an image, words, a phrase in a certain sequence, font, whether that be the actual stabilization of the font or actually the color of a font even that come together, that are associated with a particular business. A good example of this is Apple.

Usually when people say, “Oh, I’m going to the Apple Store,” they don’t mean that they’re going to buy apples. They don’t mean they’re going to the grocery store. I mean they go into the Apple Store, Apple the technology company.

Apple is an interesting case because it has trademarked Apple, the little icon and also the word when associated to technology. Obviously they can’t trademark the word Apple when it comes to food because that’s something that cannot be trademarked.

So basically going back to medical marijuana businesses, usually when dealing with the USPTO, the US Patent and Trade Office, medical marijuana businesses have been facing a hard time with getting a trademark.

That’s because, of course, medical marijuana is a schedule one narcotic still on the federal level. However, CBD is something that is tolerated by the federal government. So there have been a couple businesses here and there that have been able to get their mark registered with the USPTO because of their retail sales or their creation or cultivation, what have you, of CBD products.

Inherently with CBD products, as you guys know, there are trace amounts of THC. So then that mark registration is also able to be recognized when dealing with actual THC products. So, it’s an interesting way of getting protections for one item that you sell or four items that you sell that could potentially be expanded to the other 15 items that you sell.

So that’s how that goes, guys. If you have any questions, feel free to get to me at the comment section below. Thank you guys for turning in