Intellectual Property Rights

Dictionary of Intellectual Property Rights

brand
A trade name which is registered at an intellectual property office and has commercial / marketing value at (consumer) sales. Purpose of a brand is to distinguish your (end)product from someone elses product. You can register a brand at Benelux Office for Intellectual Property (BBIE), World International Property Organization (WIPO) or the European Office for Harmonization in the Internal Market (OHIM). For agricultural products you need to registere a brand for class 31. A brand is a valuable tool (1) to promote a series of plants, (2) to serve different markets (countries), or (3) to serve different purposes (cutflower / potplant).
A good brand name sounds likeable and is easy to remember. Regulations stipulate that a cultivar name is not allowed as a trademark. A (registered) brand can only be partially descriptive and may not lead to confusion with other products within the same class.
Formally the cultivar name should be written before the brand name. However, to maximize exposure of the brand name, in practise the brand name is often written befóre the actual cultivar name, which is then written in parentheses and often in a smaller font. The brand name is often written in capital letters. A single cultivar can have multiple brand names. Example: the world famous Rosa ‘Korbin’ is sold on the German consumer market under the brand name Rosa SCHNEEWITTCHEN (‘Korbin’), in the United Kingdom as Rosa ICEBERG (‘Korbin’) and in France as  Rosa FÉE DES NEIGES (‘Korbin’). To further illuminate the brand name over the cultivar name, some breeding companies use a meaningless code (like ‘AA0101’) for the cultivar name. It is not allowed to register a cultivar name as a brand. A competitor is not allowed to use your brand (without your consent).
ST: registered brand, unregistered brand
RT: Series

cultivar
Former abbreviation: “cv.”.
Contraction of “cultivated variety”.
A selected (group of) plant(s), registered by an ICRA, that passes the DUS test and is a new in the trade.
BT: nomenclature

cultivar drift (trade)
Synonyms: genetic drift (plant breeding), drift
Natural phenomenon that, in the course of time, a seed propagated cultivar deviates from the original type, due to coincidental fluctuations in gene-frequencies of a population. Cultivar drift occurs when a seed lot is propagated through open pollination a) for multiple years in a row, b) at different locations / circumstances or c) by different seed companies. It may also occur that a breeding company pulls back an old cultivar and silently replace it by the release of an improved form under the same cultivar name. In practise seed companies sometimes give voice to cultivar drift by writing the name of the seed company or country of propagation behind the cultivar name. Example names: Echinacea purpurea ‘Double Decker’ (Jelitto), Agapanthus ‘Duivenbrugge White’ (South Africa).
RT: seed cultivar

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