Canopyright Launches Decentralized Cannabis Herbarium and Licensing Platform, Built on Hedera Network

Canopyright has created an entirely new system for licensing cannabis strains using distributed ledger technology

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Oct 28, 2021, 09:01 ET

OAKLAND, Calif., Oct. 28, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Canopyright today launched a demonstration version of its secure, free-to-use web platform on Hedera, the most used enterprise-grade public network for the decentralized economy. Canopyright is the first and only cannabis herbarium where breeders can both register their unique strains, for free, and transact business with growers effortlessly, securely, confidentially, and paperlessly. Canopyright is currently available in California only.

Although cannabis breeders spend years, and in some cases decades, developing new and unique strains, currently there are limited available intellectual property protections for these strains. These protections, namely utility and plant patents, are unsuitable for most plant breeders in the cannabis industry, where exponentially more plant cultivars are commercially available at any given time than in traditional agricultural sectors, and plant breeders generally have fewer resources and less access to capital. As a result, and given the costs and uncertainty inherent in navigating the patent system, intellectual property rights in the vast majority of cannabis strains are not protected in any meaningful way.

Canopyright addresses this problem by allowing cannabis breeders to register their cannabis strains, for free, using time-stamped physical plant samples in tamper evident containers. Growers can use Canopyright to search for and request permission to grow these strains and arrange delivery of plant material. Canopyright then utilizes "flowering plant" data entered by growers into their state's track-and-trace system to automatically (and confidentially) generate invoices. In other words, Canopyright operates similar to music streaming services by treating cannabis breeders as "artists," cannabis strains as "songs," and flowering cannabis plants as the equivalent of a "play" of a song.

Canopyright's goal is for cannabis breeders to be rewarded for their work and cannabis growers to be able to verify their harvests are genuine using time-stamped physical samples. Consumers ultimately benefit from increased supply chain transparency and greater biodiversity of strains being commercially available for cultivation. Additionally, Canopyright's robust data protections allow for users to control access to their data.

According to Jeff Hamilton, Canopyright's founder, "we are providing a novel solution for cannabis breeders to focus on their craft, protect their work product and scale their businesses in a way that will democratize and benefit the entire industry."

"Intellectual property rights is a domain that has long been in need of the computational trust that distributed ledgers, which the Hedera network in particular, can provide," said Christian Hasker, CMO of Hedera Hashgraph. "We commend Canopyright on their innovative approach to tackling the challenge of IP rights for growers, and believe their architecture can serve as a model for those in their industry and others who want to support creators and create transparency and ownership models for intellectual property of all kinds."

Hedera is the most used, sustainable, enterprise-grade public ledger. The decentralized Hedera network offers stable governance with no forking, low and predictable transaction fees, fairness, built-in compliance, real-time settlement, and sustainable energy consumption - all of which are driving massive adoption. Hedera has the most decentralized and transparent governance model, led by the Hedera Governing Council, ensuring the reliability of the network. Hbar, the native cryptocurrency of the Hedera network, is used to protect the network through proof-of-stake and power decentralized applications.

For more information, visit www.canopyright.com.

About Canopyright

Canopyright is a decentralized cannabis herbarium where plant breeders can register and track samples of their unique cultivars and automatically invoice growers using state maintained track-and-trace data. Canopyright utilizes decentralized ledger technology to track and protect plant data and transaction records.

About Hedera
The Hedera network is the most used, sustainable, enterprise-grade public ledger for the decentralized economy. The platform is governed by a council of the world's leading organizations, including Avery Dennison, Boeing, Chainlink Labs, DBS Bank, Dentons, Deutsche Telekom, DLA Piper, EDF (Électricité de France), eftpos, FIS (WorldPay), Google, IBM, the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), LG Electronics, The London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), Magalu, Nomura Holdings, Shinhan Bank, Standard Bank Group, Swirlds, Tata Communications, University College London (UCL), Wipro, and Zain Group.

For more information, visit www.hedera.com, or follow us on Twitter at @hedera, Telegram at t.me/hederahashgraph, or Discord at www.hedera.com/discord. The Hedera whitepaper can be found at www.hedera.com/papers.

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SOURCE Hedera