Snoop Dogg helped turn “Smoke Weed Everyday” into one of the most recognizable phrases in cannabis culture. That popularity is exactly why the USPTO won’t let him trademark it.
The Refusal
Dr. ETC Holdco, LLC, Snoop’s intellectual property holding company, filed a trademark application on March 14, 2024 (Serial No. 98449797). The application sought federal trademark registration for “SMOKE WEED EVERYDAY” in connection with cannabis retail services. Snoop indicated he planned to open a retail store under the name, selling cannabis products and related merchandise. Nearly two years later, on March 10, 2026, a USPTO examining attorney issued a non-final office action refusing registration on two separate grounds: failure to function as a trademark, and the fact that cannabis goods violate federal law.
A non-final office action is not a final rejection. Snoop’s team has three to six months to respond, argue against the refusal, submit evidence, or amend the application. The door is still open, at least procedurally. But the two grounds the examiner raised present distinct obstacles, and overcoming either one will be difficult.
What makes this application telling is what the examining attorney cited as evidence. Amazon listings for sweatshirts and can coolers, a store called Weed Dreams on Creator Spring, Redbubble hoodies. Sellers with no connection to Snoop Dogg are already printing this phrase on merchandise and selling it to the public. That fact pattern is the core of the first refusal.
A second filing is also worth watching. The acronym S.W.E.D. has progressed further through the USPTO process. That difference is not accidental, and it reveals something important about trademark strategy.
Why the Phrase Can’t Function as a Trademark
A mark must identify source. That’s the core of the failure to function doctrine: when consumers see a word, phrase, or slogan on a product, they need to associate it with a specific business rather than a general meaning. The examining attorney’s language in the office action was direct: “This term or phrase is a song lyric commonly used in association with cannabis use. Because consumers are accustomed to seeing this term or phrase used in ordinary language by many different sources, they would not perceive it as a mark identifying the source of applicant’s goods and/or services but rather as only conveying an informational message.”
The phrase’s origin explains why that’s true. Nate Dogg delivered it as the closing line on Dr. Dre’s “The Next Episode” from the album “2001,” released November 1999. That’s more than 25 years of meme culture, merchandise, and casual use by people who have never heard of Dr. ETC Holdco, LLC. The phrase didn’t stay in music. It migrated into everyday language, T-shirts, novelty items, and internet culture. Nobody using it on a product is making a source claim.
This is not the same as genericization. Genericization is what happens when a once-protected mark loses protection because it becomes the common name for a product category (Aspirin, Escalator, Thermos). “Smoke Weed Everyday” never functioned as a trademark in the first place. It’s ornamental. It’s informational. It’s like printing “Have a Nice Day” on a mug and trying to stop other mug sellers from doing the same thing.
S.W.E.D. tells the other side of that story. Nobody uses the acronym as casual language. Nobody texts it, prints it on random merchandise, or drops it into conversation the way they use the full phrase. That means consumers could learn to associate the acronym with a specific brand. That’s the difference between a phrase that’s already common property and one that could still function as a brand identifier. I explain the broader question of whether you can actually trademark a catchphrase in more detail if you want the full framework.
Cannabis and the Federal Trademark Wall
Even if the failure-to-function problem didn’t exist, the second refusal would still block registration. TMEP Section 907 requires lawful use in commerce under federal law. Cannabis remains a Schedule I controlled substance under the Controlled Substances Act. That means any application tied to cannabis goods or services hits a categorical wall at the USPTO, regardless of how strong the mark itself might be.
The state-federal divide creates an obvious tension. Twenty-five states plus Washington DC have legalized recreational cannabis. Snoop himself has built a substantial cannabis portfolio: Leafs by Snoop launched in 2015 with Canopy Growth, Death Row Cannabis followed in late 2022, and his S.W.E.D. dispensary opened in Los Angeles in 2024. Casa Verde Capital, his cannabis investment fund, closed at $100 million in December 2020. The businesses are real. The federal protection isn’t available. (Leafs by Snoop also ran into a separate trademark problem in 2018 when the Toronto Maple Leafs opposed registration over logo similarity, which is a good example of how musician trademark disputes often generate unexpected brand conflicts.)
The TTAB has been consistent here. In re Brown, 119 USPQ2d 1350 (2016) rejected “HERBAL ACCESS” for cannabis retail. In re JJ206, LLC, 120 USPQ2d 1568 (2016) rejected “JUJU JOINTS” for marijuana vaporizers; the applicant argued the Cole Memorandum provided safe harbor, and the TTAB rejected that argument. A decade of precedent points in one direction.
On December 18, 2025, President Trump signed an executive order titled “Increasing Medical Marijuana and Cannabidiol Research,” directing the Attorney General to accelerate rescheduling proceedings to move cannabis from Schedule I to Schedule III. That sounds like progress, but Schedule III status alone would not open up federal trademark registration. The FDA still classifies cannabis as an unapproved drug under the FDCA, and that classification creates its own barrier independent of the CSA schedule. The 2018 Farm Bill carved out hemp (with THC content at or below 0.3%) for trademark eligibility, but that carve-out does not extend to cannabis flower or THC products. For now, the federal trademark wall holds.
What Cannabis Brands (and Everyone Else) Should Learn
S.W.E.D. points to the most actionable lesson here: when a phrase is too culturally embedded to function as a trademark, creative reformulation into something distinctive can work. But that strategic thinking has to happen before filing, not after two years of waiting produces a refusal. Snoop’s team could have arrived at the acronym approach from the start with the right analysis.
The federal trademark registration process starts with a clearance search and attorney consultation, which is the first step of the service, not a separate engagement. That work would have surfaced both problems with this application before anyone committed to the timeline. A quick search of Amazon and Redbubble would have revealed the third-party merchandise saturation. The cannabis bar is categorical and well-documented in TTAB decisions going back to 2016. Neither of these required a surprise discovery two years after the filing date.
Failure to function also applies well beyond cannabis. If your proposed mark appears on third-party merchandise from sellers with no connection to your business, you face the same wall regardless of your industry. Novelty slogans, motivational phrases, sports expressions, cultural catchphrases: all of them can trigger this doctrine. Before filing any phrase-based mark, search Amazon, Redbubble, and Etsy for existing third-party use. If the phrase is already on products you don’t control, that’s your signal to reformulate before you file.
Cannabis operators working today have options that fall short of federal registration. State trademark registration provides protection within state borders. Common law rights build through documented, consistent use of a mark in commerce. Trade dress registration can protect packaging, store design, and product presentation. Copyright protects original logos and artistic elements. Operators who build thorough use records now are creating an asset base that positions them for federal protection if federal law changes. Full-service federal trademark registration runs $1,195 plus government filing fees of $250 to $350 per class. That investment surfaces problems when they are still fixable, not in an office action that arrives years after filing.
Act Before You File
Snoop built a cannabis empire across multiple brands and a $100 million investment fund, but the phrase most associated with his identity proved impossible to register federally. The non-final office action captures a core trademark principle: the more a phrase spreads through culture, the harder it becomes to claim it belongs to one business.
Whether you’re in the cannabis industry dealing with federal restrictions or any business trying to protect a catchy slogan, the filing itself is the final step. The work that matters, clearance research, distinctiveness analysis, legal strategy, happens before anything reaches the USPTO. Skipping that process risks exactly what happened here: two years of waiting followed by a refusal you could have predicted on day one.
If you’re developing a brand name or phrase and want to know whether it can survive the USPTO’s review, contact me for a consultation. I can help you assess distinctiveness, flag potential conflicts, and build a filing strategy that avoids the problems in this case.
