Cannabis Patents You Might Not Have Expected To See

With over half of the United States having legalized some form of cannabis, the race to file patent applications has been on a steep rise. Patent Forecast® has calculated a 305% increase in patent application filings and patents in the past five years in the US. 

The start of the new year hasn’t been slow with over 70 patent assets already published. Notable companies such as Arena Pharmaceuticals and Leafly, who have been the subject of many recent press releases for their M&A activity, have had excellent beginnings with the publication of patents granted in their respective fields within the industry. But this won’t be another highlight of these popular companies. Indeed, some noteworthy patent assets from smaller, lesser-known companies will be the focus here.

Fears stemming from cannabis legalization include driving while under the influence and since, like alcohol, tolerance will vary from person to person, field sobriety tests might not be the most revealing. Just as blood is drawn for drunk drivers, RCU Labs of California is making sure the same will be done for cannabis to reduce wrongful convictions. Time of use is of great importance for making accurate convictions and can be difficult to determine from current testing procedures. RCU Labs had a patent application for a way to determine whether cannabis was recently used from a subject’s blood sample publish in January 2022. The way it works is a series of blood samples are taken at set time intervals and tested for cannabinoid metabolites to determine if cannabis was recently used. Additionally included in the patent is supporting breathalyzer tests which RCU Labs gained access to through its partnership with Sensabues AB which had begun in 2020. Take a closer look at this growing field in the ‘Sobriety Tests’ category of the Cannabis Patent Forecast. It will be of great importance to the industry. 

The COVID-19 pandemic has really ramped up contactless pickup and deliveries with increased amounts of people taking precautionary measures. Even more, touchless payment methods are becoming increasingly popular. Following this trend, three new patent applications were published in January 2022 assigned to PayRange, a touchless payment platform. These patent assets describe a dispensing machine much like a vending machine that can take payments and identify the user all from a mobile device to legally dispense cannabis products. As always, necessity is the mother of invention. Currently, PayRange offers solutions for car washes, laundry services, arcades, and retail among others and secured $70 million in funding in 2020.   

Use the Cannabis Patent Forecast to explore these companies’ patent portfolios today!