“If you look at the people who draw the analogies between Google and Facebook and TikTok, they’re either unsophisticated or they have an ax to grind in favor of TikTok,” said Dan Harris, a lawyer who works with foreign companies in China and writes the China Law Blog. “Most serious people see a difference. It doesn’t mean they’re all great or all bad, but there is a difference.”

There is a need for more legal clarity, because would-be foreign investors are still uncomfortable with Thailand’s “go with the flow” approach to medical use, said Frederic Rocafort, a lawyer in Seattle who advises clients on cannabis policies in Thailand and other countries.

“It’s interesting, but, as lawyers, it drives us crazy,” he said.

“China has become a risky place,” Dan Harris, a lawyer at Harris Sliwoski, a firm that specializes in investment with China, said in an email. “If you are going to do business there you had better know what the laws are and you had better follow them, because China is not going to let anyone slide, especially not an American or a Canadian.”

At least two previous racketeering lawsuits filed in Oregon over the smell from marijuana farms have been dismissed, making this ruling notable, said Jesse Mondry, an attorney at the law firm Harris Sliwoski, which specializes in cannabis-related legal matters. Mondry is not involved in the case.

“It changes the playing field in that the court has shown a pathway to bring racketeering claims against marijuana farms,” he said. “I don’t know that this is going to open the floodgates. At least they know now what they need to do so survive a motion to dismiss.”

“This group of people will distinguish the recent Supreme People’s Court ruling because it was an earlier set of documents, not entirely the same as the V.I.E. structure,” Mr. Dickinson predicted. “But what the court said is that any contract that is designed to avoid the clear requirements of Chinese law is void from the very first step. That is what the V.I.E. is.”

Considering the possible wide-reaching implications of this recent ruling, is it being underplayed?

“Accountants, lawyers and stock brokers make a ton of money off I.P.O.’s so they have no incentive to slow them down,” said Dan Harris, a China lawyer with Harris Sliwoski and a co-author of the China Law Blog. “They have every incentive to keep the V.I.E. structure going.”

Aaron Pelley, a Seattle lawyer who has been representing ticketed horn-honkers pro bono in support of the Occupy effort, said that even though the court case did not specifically involve the protests, the police there had largely backed down in issuing summons since the ruling.