Canopyright, a patent-pending, blockchain-powered marketplace that puts breeders' rights first, today announced the full launch of its cultivar marketplace purpose-built for cannabis breeders and commercial operators. Canopyright’s privacy-focused marketplace offers a new way for breeders to secure and market their proprietary genetic libraries.
“Unlike in other areas of commercial agriculture, where the value of new cultivars justifies the expense of filing patent applications, new cannabis cultivars typically are not protected in any meaningful way,” Jeff Hamilton, founder of Canopyright, says. “As a result, cannabis breeders, arguably the industry’s most important creators, are rarely paid fairly and operate in the ‘Wild West’ of intellectual property rights. Years, if not decades, of hard work can be misappropriated at any time. Unfortunately, most professional cannabis breeders have experienced this first-hand.”
Canopyright empowers breeders to take control over their cultivars and how they are marketed. By registering a cultivar in a Canopyright digital “time capsule,” breeders can create “prior art” to protect against third-party patent claims. That time capsule is tied to a physical plant specimen of that cultivar that the breeder keeps frozen at their premises. Once registered on Canopyright’s Hashgraph-secured platform, all data becomes immutable, establishing who was in possession of a particular specimen at a given time. This system also gives buyers a reference sample against which to validate products downstream in the supply chain.
Canopyright was designed with the support of legacy and craft farming communities in California’s Emerald Triangle and Southern Oregon over the course of three years. The founding team is rounded out by Chief Operating Officer Kelsey Parker, who brings more than a decade of marketing, fundraising, and media production experience with years dedicated to the cannabis industry, as well as Chief Community Officer Lelehnia DuBois, a second-generation legacy cannabis cultivator who has spent the last 16 years as a medical cultivator, policy advocate, and cannabis industry consultant helping bridge the gap between legacy and industry.
Dozens of breeders have already listed over 100 proprietary cultivars in beta testing, including, Arcanna Flowers, Conscious Cultivators, Emerald City Farms, Happy Dreams Genetics, HendRx Farm, Original Breeders League, Port Royal, Proxima Investments, SEED707LLC, Silver Dragon Cannabis, Southern Humboldt Royal Cannabis Company (SoHum Royal), Sticky Fields, Sunnabis, Today's Humboldt County LLC, and Trinity Alps Farms.
Breeders control all privacy settings for their genetics on the Canopyright platform. They can keep certain cultivar information confidential. Likewise, they also can keep hidden from the marketplace their genetics that are not for commercial sale. Canopyright never has access to data that isn’t made available to the marketplace by the breeder, a feature that users demand“Canopyright has no access to the data it holds, which allows me to control who benefits from that data,” says Kevin Jodrey, owner at Port Royal and a Canopyright user. “What I appreciate is that the platform’s security was designed by an attorney who has plant licensing experience. He understands the needs and the protections that a breeder would benefit from.”
Once a plant specimen has been bagged, tagged, and uploaded to the platform, breeders can create searchable profiles for each cultivar that detail phytochemical lab results, photos, DNA tests, cultivation best practices, and more. This searchable database allows buyers to easily find the genetics that best fit their consumers’ needs and their operation’s production practices. Buyers can only make an offer on genetics that are legally available in their jurisdiction, and plants are tracked in Metrc, facilitating compliance.
Canopyright can be used free of charge as a private IP catalog for both licensed breeders and home growers, enabling both hobbyists and professionals to establish their intellectual property rights. “Canopyright allows me to get the recognition for years of breeding work, as well as receive better value for that work, too,” says Joshua Stroud, owner of Conscious Cultivators and another early Canopyright adopter.
Canopyright’s platform operates like a music streaming service, enabling breeders who list their cultivars on the marketplace to monetize their work like artists partnering with streaming companies. Cultivars are the breeders’ “songs,” and each Metrc tag is equivalent to the “play” of a song. Breeders can receive a revenue stream as their cultivars are commercialized and reproduced by the growers with a royalty-based contract, or opt for a one-time contract with an upfront payment. Both contract terms are set by Canopyright and custom amendments can be added at the buyer’s and seller’s discretion.
About Canopyright
Canopyright is a blockchain-based web app that creates a fairer cannabis industry by facilitating cultivar contracts between breeders and commercial operators. Canopyright is both a marketplace where growers can discover and make offers on available cultivars in their state, and an IP catalog establishing prior art for breeders’ cannabis genetics. Data privacy is at the heart of the marketplace: Canopyright has no access to transaction records, communications, or other user data. For more information, visit canopyright.info.
Users can register at www.canopyright.com. For more information on Canopyright, visit canopyright.info or the company’s YouTube page. To schedule an interview with a Canopyright executive or user, contact Kelsey Parker, Canopyright COO, at kelsey@canopyright.com.
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