Pot Patent # 6,630,507

[mugenbao]

So if the government can do it, it must be legal to patent?

Well, sort of. It's legal to patent a useful process or unique compound, independant of whether the subject of the patent is illegal. To overly simplify, essentially you are patenting an idea rather than a substance.

trying to separate and file and patent all the phenotypes, genotypes, and subset species thereof.

You can't really do that with a patent, that's really not what patents are for. Simply put, you cannot patent a plant or variation of a plant.

It's sad how many times I've heard "The government has a patent on pot" from people who really have no idea whatsoever what a patent is. My flatmate, for instance, continually confuses patent, trademark, and copyright rights, and clearly has no clue what he's talking about

If someone wants to use the aforementioned patent in an argument for legalization, I'd suggest that they should have a sufficiently deep understanding of it, as well as the actual legal implications, before proceeding.

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