Colorado federal court says that liquid cannabinoids can be patented

The case discussed in the alert concerns a dispute between two companies that produce liquid CBD products. For the uninitiated, CBD is a cannabis derivative whose proponents say alleviates stress and pain. The compound is, for now, legal, as it doesn’t have the psychoactive effects of THC. One of the companies asserted that its liquid formula was copied; the other company asserted that cannabinoids occur naturally—in patent parlance, “products of nature”— and thus aren’t patentable.

The court denied the second company’s motion for summary judgment, saying that the liquid at issue was a “non-naturally occurring delivery method of naturally occurring chemicals in…non-naturally occurring proportions and concentrations.”