“If you create something like Charlotte’s Web or some strain that is in extraordinarily high demand, and people want it everywhere and view you as having it locked down, then the IP could definitely be a revenue source,” says Vince Sliwoski, an intellectual property lawyer who manages Harris Sliwoski’s Portland office and teaches Cannabis Law and Policy at Lewis & Clark Law School. “Otherwise, licensees may be reluctant.”

Aaron Pelley, owner of the Seattle-based cannabis litigation team Pelley Law, warns that investigators are not always your friends. Neither are they always your enemies, of course, but you need to be wary.

“No one’s business plan is to sink $800,000 or so into their growing business, operate for six months, make a few mistakes and lose it all,” Pelley says. “That’s not a business plan, but that can easily happen.”

Many conscientious Liquor Control Board (LCB) investigators (or those from the marijuana governing body in your state) are true advocates, and take the education part of their job seriously and want to see well-run businesses succeed. The problem, Pelley says, is that many prefer to focus on enforcement over education and even are encouraged to find ways to write up multiple violations for the same activity.

“Then you have growers who are doing everything they can to get it right, who go from operating with a desire for compliance to operating in absolute terror and fear of getting one more violation and losing their license,” Pelley says. “I’ve never met anyone who can function well in a company where they are operating from a place of fear.”

Oregon banks working with the cannabis industry have some new protections after Gov. Kate Brown signed House Bill 4094 into law April 4, which removes criminal liability for banks in reference to any Oregon state statutes regarding working with legal cannabis businesses.

The law also calls for a study from the Department of Consumer and Business Services to evaluate and report on financial options for legal cannabis businesses by January 2017. The law can’t do anything to protect banks against federal rules.

The bill itself probably won’t have much effect, says Vincent Sliwoski, a Portland lawyer specializing in cannabis.

“I think it’s mostly symbolic just because bank regulation is generally a creature of federal law,” he says. “Despite the fact that states say things like, ‘We’re not going to have our Department of Justice prosecute a bank for servicing a cannabis account,’ it doesn’t do much to help get around the strictures of federal regulation.”