It's midnight, Zuzu, some I am going to provide some information, but am not going to take the time to research the exact dates.
It's true that roses have often been sold by multiple names and that goes back to the early 1800s, which is an interesting story of its own.
But I am going to limit this post to the European vs US Registry controversy. The European breeders were quite willing to register any rose that they could have patented in the US probably up to the end of the 1960s or early 1970s. I am selecting that period as the turning point because I remember reading an article by Jack Harkness about the work he, Sam McGredy, Alain Meilland, Jan Spek and others were doing to create a system to protect their work internationally in 1975. That registration system is called "Plant Breeders' Rights".
What stopped the Europeans from registering their roses with the ARS actually had little to do with "Americans as upstarts in the rose world". I cannot remember the exact particulars tonight, but the trigger was that the ARS decided to charge breeders to register their roses. The Europeans said, "No way." and boycotted the ARS. The ARS changed its policy quite quickly, but the European breeders had already worked quite hard to create their own registration system and were unwilling to go back to registering roses with the ARS unless the roses were going to be sold in the US.
The registered rose name is what we would see as a breeder's code name, officially known as the denomination name, generally starting with the first three letters of the breeder's last name. Since that name had to be totally unique for registration, if those three letters were already used, another three letter code would be assigned to the breeder. This allowed the rose to be sold in many countries using what in the industry is called the "fancy name" or in our terms the "marketing name". There is no restriction on using one marketing name for several different roses over time.
It is the denomination name that is the rose name that has legal protection. It is the name that is use in US Patents and European Plant Breeders Rights registrations and therefore included in international treaties.
Unfortunately, from my point of view, the large breeding houses in Europe have found that trademarking a name is less costly than applying for the traditional breeder protection and they often re-use a name they have trade marked which only leads to more confusion. Two unique, properly registered roses with different denomination names are often introduced with a trademarked name because the company has already paid for the trademark. Trademarking a rose name was an attempt to reserve that rose "fancy name" for only one company.
I know this is a broad explanation and I am willing to go into more detail tomorrow, if anyone has any questions.
Smiles,
Lyn
