While cannabis brands need to be mindful of cannabis-specific trademark issues, they must also pay attention to trademarking basics. Back in January, we discussed three key trademark issues: distinctiveness, likelihood of confusion, and application bases. Today we continue our exploration of trademark basics, looking at the importance of choosing goods and services thoughtfully, in order
I’ve spent considerable time explaining the law regarding religious use of psychedelics on the Psychedelics Law Blog lately. A lot of that same law applies equally to cannabis. Naturally, I want to answer a similar question here: are cannabis churches legal? The answer is that they are basically “legal” in the same sense that cannabis
The battle to raise the limit of THC allowed in hemp from .3% to 1% continues. The 2018 Farm Bill defined hemp as “[t]he plant species Cannabis sativa L. and any part of that plant . . . with a delta-9 tetrahydrocannabinol concentration of not more than 0.3 percent on a dry weight basis.” It
The year 2021 was an emotional roller coaster for marijuana banking. It culminated in the death of the Secure and Fair Enforcement (SAFE) Banking Act in the Senate, when it didn’t make it into the National Defense Authorization Act (“NDAA”). As a result, licensed cannabis businesses are left hanging high and dry (again) on broad
Not many people get excited about revisions and updates to the very dry National Institute of Standards and Technology (“NIST”) handbooks. For example, the NIST 44 Handbook contains the “Specifications, Tolerances, and Other Technical Requirements for Weighing and Measuring Devices.” The handbooks are adopted every year at the annual National Conference on Weights and Measures
Happy MLK Day! If Martin Luther King Jr. were alive today, he would almost certainly advocate to end the War on Drugs. Dr. King never spoke publicly about drugs or cannabis in particular: he was assassinated in 1968, two years before President Nixon signed the Controlled Substances Act (CSA). But it is well established that
I really fought myself on putting together a festivus post of all that went wrong for the cannabis industry in 2021. Instead, I want to focus on the positives for 2022 as the industry continues to mature and expand across the U.S. and abroad. As 2021 comes to a close, here’s what I’m looking forward
For the past year, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has directed its attention to the cannabis industry– in a helpful way! This includes promulgation of cannabis tax guidelines as well as webinars and public forums dedicated to tax compliance for marijuana businesses (together, the “Guidelines”). The stated IRS goal here is “to positively impact filing
The CBD Product Safety and Standardization Act (the Act) indicates that the Feds might regulate CBD as a food ingredient, and that it may lead to regulation of other cannabinoids. If the Feds regulate CBD as a food ingredient, it could seriously change the game (in a good way) for hemp CBD companies. On December
The hopes for better and increased marijuana banking, which were tied up in the Secure and Fair Enforcement (SAFE) Banking Act (a serious and common sense federal marijuana banking bill), are currently dashed since the SAFE Banking Act has been left out of the Senate’s changes to the National Defense Authorization Act (“NDAA“). The impact?
