That bold signage on the yellow walls of Little Rock’s most popular medical marijuana store is likely to be changing soon: The name of Harvest House of Cannabis on Rodney Parham Road has been judged too similar to the name of Conway’s dispensary.
Harvest Cannabis Dispensary of Conway announced Wednesday that it has won a preliminary injunction in Faulkner County Circuit Court in a trademark dispute with Natural State Wellness Dispensary LLC and Natural State Enterprises LLC.
The injunction prohibits the two LLCs, known together as NSW Entities in court papers, from using the “Harvest” name in connection with the Little Rock dispensary or with a cultivation facility in Newport. Both are managed by Arizona-based Harvest Health & Recreation Inc. The Arkansas facilities had been branded “Harvest House of Cannabis” and “Harvest of Newport.”
The Conway company, led by Little Rock lawyer Robbin Rahman and his mother, Elizabeth Barnett of Conway, had argued that allowing “Harvest” and “Cannabis” in the names of two facilities about 30 miles apart defied business logic and invited confusion among patients.
Circuit Judge Susan K. Weaver agreed, and in an order dated May 25 she ordered the NSW Entities to cease using the name “Harvest” and to remove the name from any dispensary or cultivation site in Arkansas, and to drop any packaging bearing the name. She ordered the companies to obscure or cover interior or exterior signage using the “Harvest” name.
Barnett, CEO and principal owner of Harvest Cannabis Dispensary, said the ruling vindicated her business’s ownership of the Harvest name in Arkansas. “We have been open and honest about our intentions and branding since September 2017 when we first came up with the name around the breakfast table and sought a license from the state,” she said.
Barnett said she was shocked when the Little Rock store put up its sign after the Conway Harvest had been in operations for months. “Their application touted a long list of prominent Arkansas business leaders and politicians as their owners, but the reality seems to be that the owners ceded total control of operations to an out-of-state operator named Harvest Health & Recreation,” Barnett continued. “I guess these out-of-state folks just assumed they could just come in and bully us into submission. This ruling proves that sometimes the little guy wins.”
Christine Hersey, a spokesman for Harvest Health & Recreation, emailed the following statement to Arkansas Business late Wednesday: “With respect to the trademark dispute in Arkansas, we disagree with the decision and we plan to appeal. We will comply with the ruling, however, we view this as a temporary setback and we will continue to do everything possible to protect the Harvest brand.”
Harvest of Conway first opened on October 11, and through May 11 had sold 860.64 pounds of medical marijuana. Harvest House of Cannabis opened Feb. 14 and has sold 105.30 pounds.
Weaver ruled after a two-day evidentiary hearing conducted via the Zoom video conferencing interface, finding that Conway’s Harvest had adopted its name in 2017 and opened its facility well before the other businesses bearing the Harvest name. She also found that Arkansas law favored Harvest in Conway with senior trademark rights. During the hearing, the defendants relied on federal trademark law and the fact that Harvest Health facilities are similarly branded in other states. Weaver cited the federal illegality of cannabis as a total bar to the federal trademark rights argument.
Harvest of Conway was represented by Andrew King of Kutak Rock LLP in Little Rock. “While it was a great victory, the outcome was not unexpected,” King said. “Harvest Health & Recreation Inc. tells its own investors that it cannot protect cannabis trademarks at the federal level, but it tries to bully ‘mom and pop’ entities like Harvest into tolerating blatant trademark infringement. To their credit, my clients stood up for themselves and their own good name in Arkansas.”
King said even though the law is certain, the decision in Conway is the first in which a local cannabis dispensary has prevailed under state trademark law against a multistate operator.
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