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Hemp trademark lawsuit involving Denver firm may signal future fights in burgeoning space
Denver Business Journal
A trademark lawsuit filed against a Denver-based physical-commodities-exchange firm by a Connecticut hemp-pricing organization has the Denver company setting up a GoFundMe page.
The lawsuit, filed by New Leaf Data Services in Connecticut district court in February 2020 and transferred to the U.S. District Court for the District of Colorado last September, accuses Denver-based PanXchange of trademark infringement for the use of the term “hemp benchmarks” in its monthly pricing charts, analysis and other reports focused on the hemp plant, named “PanXchange Hemp: Benchmarks and Analysis.”
New Leaf has offices in Boulder and Denver as well as Connecticut.
PanXchange founder and CEO Julie Lerner told Denver Business Journal that she sees the lawsuit as frivolous and an attempt to drain her company of valuable resources and prevent it from calling its services what they are.
“They are literally trying to get me to stop using the words ‘hemp’ and ‘benchmark,'” Lerner said. “This is the authoritative price for the month — calling it anything else is weak.”