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w w w . c a n a d i a n l a w y e r m a g . c o m M A R C H 2 0 1 9 45 three years ago, it was for an afternoon, he says. The most recent one lasted two days. "It's touching so many areas now, and it's integrated as any other industry would be." Cannabis rising For Wendy Hulton, a partner in product regulation at Dickinson Wright in Toron- to, the ramp-up in activity started more than two years ago. She was practising when the Industrial Hemp Regulations came into effect in 1998, and she brought the first cosmetic hemp product to mar- ket, which, she says, remains the most suc- cessful one of its kind on the market today. In the past two years, in anticipation of the legalization of marijuana for rec- reational use, activity has "ramped up exponentially, and continues to grow daily," she says. M&A, intellectual property, immi- gration, finance, regulatory, market- ing and advertising are all practice areas engaged by cannabis, she says. Her fellow partner Tim McCulloch, a commercial litigator who is Dickin- son Wright's Cannabis Practice Group chairman, based in Phoenix, also names food safety and employment law. Secu- rities law is also engaged. As cannabis suppliers "are moving into the mainstream, a lot of these enti- ties are moving into the public securi- ties sphere," says McCulloch. "I think it will continue to burgeon and grow; the markets are now moving from being very underground." In the United States, he adds, "We're still where Canadian companies once were." Cannabis is legal for sale in some states but not federally. "But as these industries mature, they're running into the same situations that industries have in dealing with maturation. It's an added twist of being in the cannabis space." And the industry is set to grow even more when the proposed regulations for cannabis topicals, extracts and edible products that were released on Dec. 22, 2018 come into effect in October. This opens the door to companies in the food processing and beverage industry to move into the cannabis space. Schedule 4 of the Cannabis Act will be amended to include topicals, extracts and edibles, says Szwimer. "You'll get traditional food and pharmaceutical companies in those sectors looking to develop products that you're able to put onto the market." Although the Cannabis "When you're in a regulatory environment that has a ton of pressure to expand, there's also regulations that have subjective standards that we've never seen enforced." David Wood, Borden Ladner Gervais LLP Bright minds protecting bright ideas since 1893 Ranked as one of Canada's top IP law firms in both Canadian and international surveys of in-house counsel, we understand the business of innovation and the vital role that IP plays in today's competitive, market-driven economy. ridoutmaybee.com TORONTO | OTTAWA | BURLINGTON PATENTS | TRADEMARKS | INDUSTRIAL DESIGNS | COPYRIGHT | IP LITIGATION ntitled-4 1 2019-02-12 10:10 AM

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