Although Aurora Cannabis (ACB.TO) (ACB) does not have the best track record with maintaining business relationships, the new management team has help keep things under control…until now.

Yesterday, CTT Pharmaceutical Holdings, Inc., (CTTH), an innovative life sciences company with a portfolio of intellectual property (IP) in novel drug delivery systems, reported to have filed a statement of claim with the Ontario Superior Court of Justice against Aurora Cannabis.

CTT is seeking compensation for Aurora’s denial of contractual commitments with the company’s wholly owned subsidiary, which includes expenses, royalties due, lost royalties and damages.

This development comes after the companies entered into an agreement and after they launched CTT’s patented sublingual cannabis-infused strips under the brand name Aurora Dissolve Strips in October 2019. CTT said the product was generating traction and that demand for the product was strong. The company also said that it held meetings with Aurora to discuss an expanded product line and production planned for the end of the first quarter of 2020.

When it came time to write a check and expand the product line, CTT stated that Aurora was unwilling to commit further resources to the partnership and claimed the original agreement was no longer in force. Aurora made this claim at a time when payments were due to CTT under the original agreement and this was the catalyst for legal action being taken.

CTT had originally entered into a commercialization agreement with CanniMed, which was acquired by Aurora in 2018. CTT and Aurora jointly worked towards commercialization, with the initial production run selling out in less than 60 days. These numbers are impressive, and we are surprised that Aurora did not want to continue to build out the vertical.

CTT is led by a management team that had the foresight to know what it needed to have a relationship with Aurora. Since inception, the company has put a major emphasis on owning valuable IP and had the sublingual strip technology patented in the US, Canada, and has international patents pending in over 50 countries.

Concurrent with the filing of a statement of claim, CTT announced announces the appointment of Dr. Shane Morris to its advisory board. We believe that the addition is slap to Aurora as he is the former Chief Product Officer at Aurora and was a key player in the commercialization of the CTT strips. As a member of the board, Dr. Morris will provide advice on product and market development as well as regulatory issues. CTT will also leverage Dr. Morris’s extensive knowledge of the global cannabis industry to pursue additional opportunities.

Dr. Morris founded Morris and Associates Consulting. Prior to this, he held the position of Chief Product Officer at Aurora Cannabis, where his proven leadership and expertise in quality assurance, cannabis operations, regulatory affairs and food safety helped ensure success in launching a large portfolio of new products, resulting in Aurora commanding substantial share of the Canadian cannabis 2.0 market.

As Chief Product Officer at Aurora Cannabis, Dr. Morris played an important role with the launching a large portfolio of cannabis 2.0 products While at Aurora, Dr. Morris led a world class regulatory affairs team, managing the largest number of cannabis site licenses in Canada, in addition to many international regulatory initiatives and market launches. We expect Dr. Morris to play an important role in the success of CTT and will monitor how the story continues to evolve.

If you are interested in learning about the relationship between CTT and Aurora as well as the potential outcome of the claim, please email support@technical420.com to be added to our distribution list.