RE:RE:Sorry for the posts Stockhouse UI is still in the 1990s... ***Not a patent expert***
The outcome of the lawsuit is important but the parameters of the lawsuit are what's interesting. The lawsuit targets the material sold in the US, not all materials made by GW using the disputed patent. It seems more like a territorial dispute.
Whether Canopy wins or loses they'll likely start moving door to door down the MSO's for anyone using CO2 patent process within the US for which their patent is issued. Canopy vs GW seems to be an attempt to box out foreign imports to circumvent that. Unless Canopy is stripped of their patent in the US (not even sure if thats posssible) this entire lawsuit is a protectionist revenue/market share grab and a warning to any US based pharma that might think of entering the space domestically or accessing the US market from abroad.
Depending how the ruling goes for GW, multiple things can occur. The primary one I'd be interested in is if somehow they're awarded the patent right to CO2 in the US, for which they would likely go door to door down the MSO's like Canopy would. Again, ****Not a Patent Expert**** not even sure if thats a possible outcome.
Overall though I'm not even really sure this applies to Nextleaf as directly as people here imply. Canopy and GW are arguing about market protection for a patent process neither of them invented which existed in "the legacy market" (illicit) long before either of them. That isn't disputed by either company and both would be unlikely to defend a full war patent challenge to the merits of "owning CO2 extraction".
Nextleaf is a tech company that holds the patents to their manufacturing processes. The same way that Ford has a PowerStroke, Dodge has Cummins, Chevy has Duramax. They're all diesel based engines, it's the manner of which the technology applied makes the engine work that is patented. The majority of Nextleafs patents are for the same equipment/process just in multiple markets to avoid the situation above.
If the future of patent wars is companies pretending they invented ethanol or CO2 extraction with nothing more than a piece of paper that says they bought the right to claim this decades after the processes have been widely used then they're engaging in what is referred to as Slamming Your D*ck In A Drawer. It'll hurt more and make less sense everytime you do it, and you're doing it to yourself.