MARCH 8, 2021 VOL. 57, No. 10
TR US TE D J O U R NALI S M AT YO U R FI N G E RTI P S westfaironline.com
HOT FOR POT Lamont promises economic windfall from legalizing marijuana; Naysayers unconvinced BY KEVIN ZIMMERMAN kzimmerman@westfairinc.com
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ov. Ned Lamont is making a fullcourt press to legalize recreational marijuana this year, saying that Connecticut is missing out on millions of dollars of revenue — a situation he says will grow worse as neighboring states push forward with their own legalization efforts. Massachusetts legalized the sale of recreational cannabis in 2016 — sales began in 2018 — and on Feb. 23, New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy signed three bills paving the way for a recreational cannabis pro-
gram in that state. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo has been pushing for legalization for the past couple of years and during a January video conference, he said, “I think this should have been passed years ago. This year will give us the momentum to get it over the goal line.” “Now is the time,” Lamont said during his own video conference on Feb. 24, promising to legalize adult-use recreational marijuana “in a carefully regulated way with an emphasis on equity and justice.” The governor also disparaged the War on Drugs
and said that Prohibition — which legally banned the production, importation, transportation and sale of alcoholic beverages from 1920 to 1933 — didn’t work. “It created a lot of alcohol poisoning,” he said. “And Al Capone and the underground market took over for a period of time.” Lamont said a similar situation exists now, with black marketeers reaping untold millions from the sale of nonregulated substances. The governor’s Senate Bill 888, formally introduced on Feb. 22, would allow adults 21 and » HOT FOR POT
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Chewy sues IBM in patent dogfight BY BILL HELTZEL bheltzel@westfairinc.com
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nline retailer Chewy Inc. is taking on tech giant IBM like a tenacious Miniature Schnauzer challenging a powerful Rottweiler in a dogfight over how it uses its website to peddle pet products. Chewy, of Dania Beach, Florida, is trying to stave off a patent infringement lawsuit by attacking IBM first, characterizing the Armonk company as a troll. “IBM has an army of lawyers who try to patent just about anything and then aggressively seeks to license those
patents,” Chewy claims in a Feb. 15 lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court, Manhattan. Chewy said it has not violated any patents, but in challenging IBM it risks losing $83 million when it could have settled for $36 million. It is “widely accepted,” Chewy states, that IBM does not make or sell anything from thousands of patents it has obtained over the past 20 years. Instead, it demands that companies pay large royalty payments to avoid costly litigation. Companies that have heeled to IBM’s demands include Airbnb, Expedia, Groupon, Priceline and Twitter, according to the lawsuit, basically surren-
dering and paying IBM loads of money. The IBM corporate media relations office did not respond to an email asking for its side of the story. The standoff began in July when IBM sent Chewy CEO Sumit Singh a notice of infringement on four IBM patents. “IBM views your continued use of these inventions as a serious matter,” the letter states. And while IBM prefers a negotiated business resolution, it has been forced to sue companies like Amazon to resolve misuse of its patents. The patents, issued from 2004 to 2017, cover methods for present» CHEWY
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