The Open Cannabis Project (OCP) was established by industry leaders to resist these forces and to protect the genetic diversity of the Cannabis plant as well as the economic diversity of the cannabis industry.
The US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has started granting patents on cannabis varieties. Agricultural patents are generally bad for the environment, for farmers, and for the future of crop plants themselves.
For cannabis, they’re a disaster. The first cannabis patents issued by the USPTO are the kind of overly broad patent protection that kills innovation instead of incentivizing it. They’re called utility patents, and they don’t cover single varieties: they cover huge categories of cannabis. Which means that just a handful of such patents could potentially lock up all of cannabis.