Cannabis and Innovation – Potent Patents! – Ep. 23 [Podcast]

Summary

In this week’s episode of Stuff You Should Know About IP, Thomas Colson and Raymond Guarnieri welcome special guest Kevin Fortin, a patent attorney who has been in the cannabis industry for more than ten years, to discuss intellectual property issues relating to cannabis. Many states have legalized marijuana, but it is still prohibited at the federal level. The United States Patent and Trademark Office can grant a patent for a product that the Food and Drug Administration has not yet approved. Federal trademark protection is only possible in connection with a product that is sold in interstate commerce, or when there is a bona fide intention to sell it in interstate commerce. Though it can be difficult to get a federal trademark for certain cannabis products, it can be possible to obtain common law trademark rights within a state or to register the trademark with a state. Present-day patent law is derived from the mining industry’s concept of a land patent. Cannabis is a botanical term that includes marijuana and hemp, the latter of which is legal at the federal level. Hemp contains less than 0.3% THC; marijuana has more than 0.3% THC, and it can contain up to between 20% and 30% THC in its buds. Hemp can be used to make products such as fabric, rope, graphene, hempcrete, and animal bedding. A plant patent can be obtained for an engineered hemp plant. A utility patent can be obtained for applications of hemp and for hemp processing methods.

Transcript

Raymond Guarnieri:

Cannabis. The world is opening up to legalization, both medicinally and recreationally. And of course, if the right business circumstances exist, innovation will inevitably take its course. So we’re here with Kevin Fortin, who is a patent attorney, and he has been in the cannabis business for over a decade. So we’re going to talk about innovation in cannabis. This is Stuff You Should Know About IP.

Thomas Colson:

Yeah. Cannabis is really a cool topic, right? Because it’s federally illegal, but there’s 30 States that have legalized it. But, patents start in federal district court. So you have to try to enforce a cannabis patent in federal district court when it’s federally illegal. Right? Anyway. Kevin, talk to us.

Kevin Fortin:

Absolutely. That, is one of the big questions that people have this intellectual confusion. And the good news is, and this is what I always say. And it just blows people away. Patents give you the right to exclude others, to stop people from doing something. So you’re in federal court with your arm around the judge. We want to stop these people from selling their infringing products. And it’s perfectly aligned.

Thomas Colson:

They want to stop the use of cannabis and we want to stop them from using our cannabis patents.

Kevin Fortin:

Yeah. So you’re going after your competitor, putting a black hat on them, trying to put them out of business. It’s a perfect forum for that. And that is the only time in the whole cannabis industry that you’re aligned with the powers that be, it seems. It’s perfect for patents.

Thomas Colson:

You’re no longer the rebel. You’re no longer the outcast. Now you’re part of the establishment.

Kevin Fortin:

Exactly. Now you have to understand one thing about patents. The pharmaceutical industry has paved a very wide path. Everything that they attempt to patent is illegal because they don’t have FDA approval yet. And they don’t get FDA approval unless they know that they’re going to get the patent. So because it costs money and they want protection.

Thomas Colson:

Oh wow. So they don’t have FDA approval and they won’t get FDA approval until they know they can get a patent.

Raymond Guarnieri:

That’s interesting.

Kevin Fortin:

Right, right. That wouldn’t make sense.

Thomas Colson:

Outside of FDA approval.

Kevin Fortin:

Yeah. So everything that’s filed in the pharmaceutical space is probably illegal from the FDA perspective. So the patent office just doesn’t care. They don’t look at that. Everything that’s illegal gets pumped through assuming that the FDA will give it the rubber stamp at some point. So there’s also a treaty rights. So foreign countries, we have to respect when they file in the U S that the rights will flow. So the patent office, on the patent side of things, not the trademark side of things, but on the patent side of things, it’s a big wide open door.

Kevin Fortin:

People never understood that. I mean, you’re early on. People are in their mom and pop situation in their one state that doesn’t have any neighboring states, except where it’s allowed. And they just don’t think out of the box, like this is going to be big business international. It’s going to require patents to have an edge when you’re selling in Walmart. You don’t want Walmart to white label your product. Right.

Thomas Colson:

Right. Oh, by the way, though, before you go on Kevin, I just thought of something and that is: To have a trademark you need to be lawfully doing business in commerce with your products, right? In interstate commerce.

Kevin Fortin:

So, or a bonafide or a bonafide intention to use it.

Thomas Colson:

Yeah. So it must be difficult though, to get trademark protection on products that are not allowed to be sold in interstate commerce.

Kevin Fortin:

Imagine a pendulum swinging. Initially it was super difficult than the first farm bill passed. It was easy. And then the next farm bill passed, or then it became more difficult. Then the next farm bill passed, it became easy. Now, it’s very difficult for orally ingestible products, including hemp derived CBD products. If you have a topical cream and it’s hemp CBD or other hemp, derived cannabinoid, pretty easy. Everything else is very difficult. And the question becomes, what do you do under that circumstance?

Kevin Fortin:

The trademark office is being difficult. They’re the proxy of certain large online distributors of products is their first level of regulatory compliance. You know how certain larger distributors have online products that are really making a lot of money during this COVID situation? Those guys get the post office to subsidize them. They get the trademark office to put the regulatory stuff out front. So they’re really benefiting here. And the trademark office is doing the bidding of the FDA and the DEA. And it still comes up sometimes. And to some degree they’re supposed to, but they’re really the frontline for regulatory compliance. So if you can get a trademark, really good. There’re other ways to do it. You can get a trademark on your topical product and extend it to your orally ingestible product. And maybe nobody really realizes that’s sold in the same area of the store.

Thomas Colson:

And you could build common law trademark rights. Right?

Kevin Fortin:

If you can’t get the federal rights and you can’t sell at Amazon, their trademark law was the first consumer protection law. It enabled consumers to see the mark and understand what the quality of the product was. So imagine the little symbol on the side of the beer barrel, coming through merry ole England, pulled by horses, and then they broke out the beer barrel in the town and it poisoned everybody. Everyone got sick. The king started getting upset when this started happening. So they enforced the first trademark law and people that had the wrong label on the barrel and made everyone sick, got in trouble.

Thomas Colson:

That’s a really cool story. I never knew that.

Kevin Fortin:

Yeah. It’s a consumer protection law at its heart. And it strayed from that a little bit, but really, the state has an interest in the people have an interest in making sure there’s no confusion as to the source of the goods. There’s [crosstalk 00:07:05] no confusion as to the quality of the goods.

Kevin Fortin:

So you have your common law trademarks, which is just the right that exists from you selling a product in your state. You can go to court and say, “Hey, these are other guys that are duping all the customers.” There’s a remedy.

Kevin Fortin:

There’s also state registration of trademarks. So if you’re selling marijuana in California, you run to the secretary of state where you’ve filed your corporate documents and you can press the trademark button. Pay a small fee.

Kevin Fortin:

So you have to do that after you’ve been selling the product in commerce. So that’s a way of doing it the 50 state way. The federal level, you still do it, but it’s really good. Even though you know, you’re going to lose at the end, you file it. It’s published. Everyone knows about it. It creates a track record. Then all of a sudden, two years down the road, you can’t get the mark just refiled. It’s not that expensive. And instead of going to court…

Thomas Colson:

And you’re building federal common law rights, all along the way.

Kevin Fortin:

Not common law rights. Those are built by just selling the product, but you’re putting your stake in the soil. Putting people on notice, half the benefit of federal registration is being in the database. So they decide, well, maybe I’m not going to use this mark it’s already in the database. Presumably someone who puts it there in the database by filing their trademark application has the desire to enforce it too.

Kevin Fortin:

So if you want to enforce your mark, you can’t get it registered. There’s a unfair competition law at the federal level called the Lanham Act. The Lanham Act prevents remedies, deceptive business practices. So when you’re out there deceiving customers showing, you’re the trademark using the little triangle on your cannabis product. Whereas the other guys have been using it for years. You’re duping the customers. That’s unfair competition, and there’s a remedy. It could be treble damages. So even if you don’t get the trademark registered, you still have a remedy. Registered mark where someone’s using it and bad faith and they’re duping the customers.

Thomas Colson:

So what about, what about patents? I know that it’s, a huge thing. Now that companies are starting to race to get patents so that at some point, they could be acquired perhaps by one of the large pharma companies, or large food or beverage companies.

Thomas Colson:

Yeah. So, so the way the business cycle works, you have all the mom and pop guys. A few of them get patents. In the marijuana side of things, it’s still federally illegal. So it’s all small businesses. As soon as the rescheduling occurs, which I don’t think is great for mom and pop, but there’ll be a huge push for consolidation. And the big guys will get in a lot of Wall Street money on the cannabis side. And that’s when patents will be important, because then you can control the market for your product nationwide.

Thomas Colson:

Why were they important to mom and pops right now when the consolidation occurs?

Kevin Fortin:

So in order to obtain a patent, you have to file. You have to file when you invent it. So if you’re selling the product, there is a one-year grace period to get a patent to file your patent. But if the product’s already been out in the market, then it’s no longer new and you can’t file a patent application. after the fact. You have to kind of do it first.

Kevin Fortin:

So these guys put their stake in the sand prior to their launching of their product or within one year of launching their product. And that’s why they get the patent rights. If someone else were to file later, all of this prior art exists and they really can’t get the broad patent coverage. So you’re setting up, just like when they had the gold mining days in Colorado, people would rush up to the mountains, put stakes in the ground, run down to the patent office, literally.

Kevin Fortin:

And they would register their claims and they would work their property and they would win when they discovered gold. And it’s the same thing with the patent law. In fact, it’s derived from this land patent concept in the mining industry. Where you’re staking your claims and you’re painting your patent at the patent office, it’s literally the same thing.

Thomas Colson:

That’s pretty cool. I never knew that either.

Kevin Fortin:

Look at the mining days with the gold rush and silver rush back in the 18, whatever 49 in California, you stake your claim. You have the claim, you’re working your claim. The big guys, come in, buy your claim and put a bunch of people there to help them get minerals. So it’s the same concept. The big guys like to wait on the sidelines and they don’t have any risks. They wait until the claim is productive and then they go in and buy it. So it’s the same thing in, the mining industry, as it is in the patent industry or cannabis.

Thomas Colson:

That sounds exciting. So in the future, when the consolidation occurs, those companies with the most meaningful patents today might have the most leverage with respect to the impending acquisition.

Kevin Fortin:

Absolutely. Absolutely. You know, if you’re going to spend your money in an acquisition type setting, you want some insurance, right? But you can’t buy insurance. The only way you can get insurance for the marketing dollars that have been spent building the trademarks is to get a registered trademark. The only way you can ensure your product development dollars and your R&D dollars that were spent, aren’t wasted. You get a patent for that. So these entrepreneurs that do those things are essentially buying insurance policies for the acquirer. When they come in, to give them the assurance that there’s not going to be immediate competition for the product that’s out in the market.

Thomas Colson:

So right now I noticed that the number of filings in patents has gone from increased by 50%, for 2012 to 2015 and 15 to 18. So clearly people are getting what you have in your head, into their heads. That they better start racing to get to patents. Right?

Kevin Fortin:

Yeah. Yeah. So, they were going to close the patent office down in the 1880s, because they said everything that’s useful it’s has been invented already. This was,

Thomas Colson:

Yeah, I remember that. That was the head of the patent office and 18 years.

Kevin Fortin:

Yeah. Obviously you probably had some agenda in the background. One of his supporters probably didn’t like patent infringement lawsuits, but that just gives you an idea of how off some people can be with their perspective. So when I say that everything’s been invented in the cannabis space, that’s just not true. And I’m not going to say that. Some people might say that. It’s not early for, orally ingestible products. It’s not early for different extraction methods that are solvent [inaudible 00:14:28]. Cause solvent’s introduced toxins. It’s not too early for alternatives to CO2 extraction, which just because you have a machine there with different parts and metal and things, the pressures and the CO2 extraction, there can be some toxicity to the final product. I’m kind of a green guy and holistic medicine type person. And I just don’t like toxicity in any product. And right now it’s not super regulated. So you want to get the cleanest organic toxin-free cannabis product. Especially if you’re sick. Think about it?

Thomas Colson:

Well, you’re already sick.

Kevin Fortin:

It’s probably because of the toxic load from your food and all of everything else that you touch. So I’m a big proponent on having kind of clean products. So there’s also the angle for orally consumable products of bioavailability. And then there’s synergistic ingredients. I have one guy that went to the rainforest in Peru and he’s a great client. I use his product, but it’s, he’s found these antiviral plant additives that he puts in his CBD product. And it gives it a super strong antiviral effect. And so he uses these rainforests herbs and mixes them with the CBD products. So you’ve got some viral infection you’re shivering and your muscles ache. You can just take one pill and it’ll solve your problems. Now I’m not saying it solves the problems, but I’m just saying that he uses the shaman down in Peru to help formulate his product.

Thomas Colson:

Right. But you know, it’s kind of funny because the shaman down in Peru, he was probably doing this stuff for a few decades, right?

Kevin Fortin:

Well with the additional stuff, but he probably wasn’t using cannabis.

Thomas Colson:

Right. Yes. And that’s where, that’s where you get your line of patentability, right?

Kevin Fortin:

You mix your products and some would say, “Oh, it’s obvious to use an antiviral with an antiviral.” And they have a paid management products, but the results we’re getting are super surprising. It’s not one plus one, plus one, equals three. It’s one plus, one plus one equals eight in this case. So if you have surprising results, then it’s not obvious, because if it was obvious, people would have done it already.

Thomas Colson:

And the results wouldn’t be so surprising.

Kevin Fortin:

Yeah, and your results wouldn’t be so surprising. I have another client that really perfected the topical thing. He’s a pharmacist in Missouri and he knows how to formulate stuff. He’s a compounding pharmacist. And he took his knowledge from the pharmaceutical world and he put it into the cannabis space. And he mixes the terpenes and the isolate of this CBD and my wife uses this product every day for neck and stuff. I have to keep getting it. I don’t make much money with this client because I’m always buying their product.

Thomas Colson:

Hey, there’re many forms of compensation, Kevin. Yeah. Happy wife. How valuable is that?

Kevin Fortin:

I’m telling you yeah, it’s worth every cent that I lose for it. So I’m happy to do it. So there’s some brilliant products that are out there. But what I wanted to do in this conversation, in any conversation, we’re only talking about orally consumable, topical medical products. That’s only 5% of the potential of cannabis. You’re like what?

Thomas Colson:

Think about exactly what I was thinking. You read my mind. Kevin.

Kevin Fortin:

Think about hemp and the history. And you look at the Dutch, they used to have the world reserve currency. You know why? Because they built their sales of their boats out of hemp fabric, their ropes out of hemp. There were the biggest hemp growers in the world. And they equip all of their Navy, all of their ships with hemp, which does not rot so easily as any other material that they might’ve used for sails.

Kevin Fortin:

So they had the best equipped Navy. Their sails didn’t tear and rip and shred. After a couple of months at sea, we really had a huge advantage and they had the word reserve currency it for awhile. So that was a story about hemp. And the potential for hemp is just incredible.

Kevin Fortin:

There is a PhD professor that I talked to that now teaches the Clarkson University, in upstate New York. He used to teach at one of the Canadian universities where they developed hemp graphene. Graphene is like a super cool form of carbon that they just invented, 10 or 15 years ago. And you can make that out of a hemp fiber. And one thread of graphene is thick as a cat’s whisker, can be separated and moving into a net that can actually hold up the cat. That’s how strong graphene is. And it can be used in semiconductors because it’s conductive.

Kevin Fortin:

And it has really interesting conductive properties that can be used in super capacitors could be integrated into automotive batteries, things like that. So this is starting to look. So when you’re talking about graphene, you’re talking about space, age materials. Things that can build a scaffolding up in space. You’re talking about things that can really change how we manufacture everything. It can be impregnated into plastics. So with hemp moving to plastics, you can make hemp plastic.

Kevin Fortin:

Anything that you make out of petroleum, out of oil that you can make out of hemp. They have hempcrete, which is a building material. They use hemp herd as bedding for animals. Now, if you’re in Kentucky and you’re in the horse racing business, for example, and you have a big labor cost with all your horses and all your barns, and you’re using one kind of bedding, you have to switch out after three or four days. To use hemp for the inside of the hemp stock for your bedding. It doesn’t get as stinky as fast.

Kevin Fortin:

It doesn’t degrade as fast. You can leave it there for a couple extra days. So your labor costs are going way down by using hemp hued, just the raw central part of the hemp stock.

Thomas Colson:

How hard is hemp to grow in mass quantities.

Kevin Fortin:

So in Poland, there’s a strain of hemp that grows like 30 feet tall. You can sequester more carbon with a hemp field than you can in a rain forest. So it grows faster than a rain forest. The ability to grow hemp, especially in the Midwest where probably Indiana is one of the best places, according to the agriculture department in Kentucky, which they wouldn’t say unless it’s true.

Kevin Fortin:

So where there’s some rain where there’s flat land. Wherever you grow corn, you can grow hemp. Okay. So it’s really an incredible opportunity. Now I haven’t even talked about, we have these modern space age materials that could be manufactured. You can use hemp to manufacture plastics. There’s people with plastic forks and spoons. They’re not as bad for the environment as fracking and pumping fossil fuels out of the ground. So it’s really an amazing product. There’s so many other uses for hemp that it’s…

Raymond Guarnieri:

How is hemp different in terms of regulation from a normal, is it any different than a normal cannabis plant?

Kevin Fortin:

Yeah. So the word cannabis botanically includes hemp and marijuana. Cannabis sativa.

Raymond Guarnieri:

So that’s the distinction between hemp and marijuana. They’re both cannabis.

Kevin Fortin:

Yes. They’re both cannabis. Hemp has less than 0.3% THC in it. According to the federal law. States have their own laws. So every state’s different. In Indiana, they make you jump through so many hoops to grow hemp, even though it’s legal at the federal level. Nobody’s doing it. There’s a few people doing it. They do it through Purdue university typically, but other States like Colorado, they’ve been growing hemp for years. And it makes for a strong stock when you’re growing it in a dry high altitude environment. And there’s a lot of wind and stuff. So, that changes what the plant is going to look like. But in Canada, Manitoba, they grow hemp for seed. The seeds are big and huge, and they are the best food in terms of the protein content. So there’s so many different kinds of proteins in there that it’s perfectly balanced for human consumption.

Thomas Colson:

How big are hemp? I didn’t see your hand. Where are you doing this?

Kevin Fortin:

No, it’s smaller than a piece of popcorn, for sure. It’s about a quarter of the size of a piece of popcorn, but they’re, they breed these plants to get bigger seeds than your normal marijuana seeds. So, it’s the perfect protein product for animal feed. If you have show pigs, you want to use hemp seed and in the pig feed, if you have race horses, in the Arabian race horses that race in Kentucky for different things, they’ve been feeding them hemp seeds for a long time and even exporting hemp seeds.

Thomas Colson:

You were saying that hemp has a certain percentage of THC as compared to marijuana.

Kevin Fortin:

0.3% is the federal cutoff.

Thomas Colson:

And that’s what hemp is.

Kevin Fortin:

Yeah, it’s less than 0.3%.

Thomas Colson:

What’s marijuana?

Kevin Fortin:

Marijuana is cannabis sativa L with greater than 0.3%.

Thomas Colson:

Actually greater than 0.3%. Or is it just a little bit?

Kevin Fortin:

They’ve been breeding some marijuana strains with up to 20, 30% in the bud. So they don’t measure those sticks in the stems and they just measure the bud, but it can yield up to 30% THC in the bug itself.

Thomas Colson:

There can be a massive difference between hemp and marijuana.

Kevin Fortin:

Absolutely. Yeah, and it depends what you grow it for. With medicine, you’re growing the flower or the bud. And that’s where the concentration of cannabinoids is. The other products like in Manitoba, Canada, they’re growing it for the seeds, which pop out of the bud. But, by the time they harvest, it’s mostly seeds on the end of it. For other plants that are harvesting it for the fiber, for the stem, for the hemp hurd. They make ethanol and oil.

Thomas Colson:

What I think I’m hearing is that, Woody Harrelson is a visionary? Is that what I’m hearing?

Kevin Fortin:

He’s on the right track? I mean, he’s been…

Thomas Colson:

Since like the nineties, I think.

Kevin Fortin:

Well, I’m looking at it from a patent perspective, all these opportunities to develop new processes, to do all these things. So I’m really excited about the technology part.

Kevin Fortin:

Now, Woody Harrelson, he cares about the environment and from hat perspective, he’s been right this whole time. And I love products that dis intermediate, these literally dinosaur industry products like fossil fuels. I mean, can you get rid of them today? If you can do something that can dis intermediate these fossil type industries that’s, awesome. In my book.

Thomas Colson:

What he has been getting arrested for planting hemp since the mid nineties, and acquitted. He’s getting arrested and acquitted. But I remember the big days in the nineties when he was a big preacher of hemp. Going out of his way to get arrested for hemp, but you’re right. Cause he cares about the environment and it sounds like this is great for the environment.

Kevin Fortin:

Well, the people in the United States, in my opinion care about the environment. They don’t want poison water from fracking. They don’t want the air polluted. They don’t want this GMO corn [inaudible 00:27:27] sprayed all over their houses. You know what I mean? They just don’t want that, and the best thing about hemp is it, grows naturally. It’s like a weed. Literally. And it’s been growing in the United States forever until, 1930s. So it grows really well.

Kevin Fortin:

It doesn’t need too many pesticides if any, it doesn’t really need extensive amounts of chemical fertilizers to grow. And so compared to corn, it’s a low budget crop. And it’s nice for the earth because hemp actually has a way of transmuting, different toxins in the soil. It uptakes, everything. That’s why the seeds are so good to eat because uptakes everything. But it uptakes a lot of toxins from the soil. And your first couple of crops you want to do something else with. [crosstalk 00:28:21] the hempcrete, but they grew in a chair noble to mitigate, the radioactive isotopes and it’s fascinating. They should put it at Fukushima too. So it’s a magical place.

Thomas Colson:

The first couple of crops you want to grow for the fibers, not for the food.

Kevin Fortin:

You want to put it in hempcrete so it sequesters it. Keeps it buried in the wall for a long time. Hempcrete a great building material. Right now, you go to Lowe’s and they’re out of lumber, right? We’re having all kinds of problems with supply chain and building materials. So if that continues, it’s a perfect opportunity to use hempcrete. It’s not a structural material, it’s a insulation material. So you get a foot of hempcrete and the wall it’s really lightweight. It’s concrete mixed with hemp fiber and it creates installation, and it’s fire proof, and mold resistant. So it’s pretty good.

Thomas Colson:

It’s biocompatible material.

Kevin Fortin:

Yeah. They still haven’t perfected [crosstalk 00:29:25]. It’s not as fast as putting up a stick house, like we normally build with. But then that leaves room for innovation. Right?

Thomas Colson:

Right.

Kevin Fortin:

So, I’m all about this disruptive technology, whether it’s the building trades or.

Thomas Colson:

Yeah. It sounds exciting. So just kind of to give us a quick overview. What are the key areas of cannabis patenting? It’s clearly not in the compositions of matter and plant patent. It’s more in the… it sounds like it’s in the applications of things like hemp to all kinds of functional areas.

Kevin Fortin:

Yeah. So there are plant patents. If you’re going to engineer plants, you can get a patent for it. Hemp’s not planted enough to justify the expense supply, all of that, unless you’re planning on populating the Kansas farms with just hemp.

Kevin Fortin:

The trend that I see lately is in the processing side. So whatever your product is, it’s the improvements in the processing of hemp. Some people take hemp fiber and they run it through an auger and they put enzymes through it and they separate the oils from the cellulose, from the other stuff. And it creates some to make him plastic, for example.

Kevin Fortin:

So how do you make him plastic? There’s lots of ways to do it. If you’re in the oil industry, you know most of the traditional ways, but there’re additional ways to do it. In the agricultural John Deere’s probably looking at ways of harvesting hemp, but some of it has a really thick and woody stock.

Kevin Fortin:

So your typical combine, isn’t going to be able to handle it. You need to have improvements in the harvesting equipment right? So in the chemical industry, how to separate the different useful components. How to put it back together again. I mean, we have 3D printers that could be using hemp based materials for building houses, right? So the world is changing rapidly. And when people are stressed, when people are under pressure, they don’t get a paycheck, they lost their job. All of this stuff mounts up. And some of those people, the light bulb comes on and they invent stuff.

Kevin Fortin:

And I’ve never seen such enthusiasms with this COVID thing. Especially if people are just inventing stuff like crazy. I don’t know how it all comes at the same time. It’s not necessarily an individual effort. It’s a kind of this vibe in the atmosphere that causes people to invent stuff, and it’s happening in the hemp industry. So everyone that I talk to at least maybe I’m biased, but super amount of creativity, super great ideas. And that yields enthusiasm because people love what they do. They’re entrepreneurs. They’re not in it necessarily, they want to make money and feed their families, but they love what they’re doing. These hemp builders. Oh my God, I’ve never seen such enthusiastic carpenters.

Thomas Colson:

You have my eyes.

Raymond Guarnieri:

I mean, this is really an eye opening discussion.

Thomas Colson:

I’m excited about hemp now.

Raymond Guarnieri:

Yeah. It’s such a fascinating and I think so little known. Almost everything that you’ve said today was just totally unknown to me.

Thomas Colson:

But imagine Ray… but imagine there’s people out there that are thinking about hemp every day, like this is normal conversation for them.

Kevin Fortin:

Now you know why Woody Harrelson didn’t care if he got arrested or not. The enthusiasm people brought when they realize what’s going on from the environmental standpoint, from the industrial standpoint, from the medicinal standpoint. I don’t sell any products. I’m allowed to say whatever I think.

Thomas Colson:

Right.

Kevin Fortin:

I told the story to Raymond about my dog, Lola the St. Bernard. She was diagnosed with lymphoma. She was laying in the backyard, couldn’t even drink water, her head swollen up like the size of a basketball. We carried her into the car, brought her to the vet. She was diagnosed with the lymphoma. They gave her some steroids to reduce the swelling so she could drink water. That happened to be the same day I was working with a PhD inventor that wanted me to license his patents for this particular formulation that I experimented with in my garage in Colorado. And that was the day I came out with my first batch of the formulation. I was like, “I’m going to give it to Lola.” Gave it to Lola six weeks. Cancer-free.

Thomas Colson:

Wait, you invented it?

Kevin Fortin:

No a PhD invented it. I experimented with how to make it. So when I was on licensing…

Thomas Colson:

You influenced how to make it.

Kevin Fortin:

When I was trying to sell it to people, I had to tell them how to make it.

Thomas Colson:

So wait, you were selling it. So in addition to a patent lawyer, you’re also selling hemp products.

Kevin Fortin:

I was selling a patent portfolio for a particular product, and I needed to tinker with the… set up a chemistry lab in my garage. But Lola was my biggest Guinea pig. My first and only Guinea pig. And she was cured of cancer. And it’s not just me look online, “cancer cured cannabis.” I’ve had clients that have huge businesses in the space that develop vape pens with a specific combination of carriers and things.

Kevin Fortin:

They had pancreatic cancer. Cured. 70 something year old woman running a big, huge empire that cures her pancreatic cancer 10 years ago with cannabis. And these are things that are very disruptive to the powers that be. Now, you know why it’s illegal?

Kevin Fortin:

I questioned when ethanol was popular as a motor fuel. And happened to be right at the same time that certain companies, Rockefeller, et cetera, were pushing the oil. That’s when hemp became illegal.

Thomas Colson:

Wow.

Kevin Fortin:

I don’t know if there’s a there’s a new [inaudible 00:35:37] for people that didn’t want, they had forest holdings and he didn’t want him to be around, to compete with their forest holdings. Interestingly, hemp is better for paper because it’s got natural binders in it. You don’t need chemical binders. So Dow Chemical and other forest holding companies get together back in the thirties, preserve their investments.

Thomas Colson:

I have to say, it’s unfortunate that we only have 20 minutes total or so, cause this is probably a great three hour discussion.

Raymond Guarnieri:

Yeah. I feel like there’s so much more left to uncover. So we might have come back to this topic again soon.

Kevin Fortin:

It’s come back someday, when I have time. I love talking about this stuff. I have a lot of enthusiasm for the industry. And then for those participants that have so much enthusiasm, it rubs off on me.

Raymond Guarnieri:

Yeah. That’s absolutely, for any of those folks who get a hold of this and maybe you can help us spread this among the community a little bit but, that’s the exact kind of person that we, made this podcast for. People in their space who want to, and need to learn more about intellectual property. It’s the Stuff You Should Know About IP podcasts. I guess with that, I’ll just say, Kevin, thank you so much for joining us today.

Kevin Fortin:

Well, you can find me on LinkedIn, if anybody that sees this needs to reach out to me

Raymond Guarnieri:

Yep. [inaudible 00:37:05] That’s where we post it. So it’ll be there. And for those of you who did watch and enjoy the conversation, you can connect with Kevin. you can also share in like the podcast on LinkedIn and on YouTube. Thank you guys so much for joining us today and thanks Kevin for being our guests.

Thomas Colson:

Thank you Kevin.