Emerging from shadows, pot industry tries to build brands

The pot industry's makeshift branding efforts, from celebrity names on boxes of weed to the many weed-themed T-shirts and stickers common in towns with a legal marijuana market, show the industry taking halting steps toward the mainstream.

Patents and trademarks are largely regulated by the federal government, which considers marijuana an illegal drug and therefore ineligible for any sort of legal protection.

[...] federal authorities have either ignored or rejected marijuana patent and trademark requests, as in the 2010 case of a California weed-delivery service that applied to trademark its name "The Canny Bus."

[...] there is broad agreement within the patent law community that they will, said Eric Greenbaum, director of intellectual property for Ligand Pharmaceuticals, Inc., which is seeking a patent for a strain of marijuana to treat seizures that it has developed in Minnesota.

Pot companies are also filing state-level trademarks, thereby avoiding the snag in a federal trademark application: the requirement that the mark is used in interstate commerce, which remains off-limits for pot companies.

The marijuana industry certainly has been on the receiving end of legal threats from other companies that do have trademark and patent protection.

Brand differentiation is the normal progression of events," said Lord, who wouldn't share sales figures on the Leafs By Snoop pot but says its performance has been "outstanding.