On December 20, 2018, the Farm Bill of 2018 was signed into law, which explicitly removed hemp and its byproducts from the definition of Marijuana, a substance prohibited by the Controlled Substances Act. On May 2, 2019, the USPTO issued Examination Guide 1-19 providing official guidance for federal trademark applications covering cannabis and cannabis derived goods and services. It’s now clear that the USPTO will allow federal trademark registrations for marks used on some hemp-based products, including those containing hemp-derived CBD, but there are important limitations.

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