A rose by any other name would still smell as sweet

 

Perhaps you could rename the grape varietal, something like "Dang Me" or "King of the Road?"   -Comment by Qualitarian on the post about layering seedless grapes

Funny you should bring that up.

There are three levels of legal protection granted to breeders of plants like grapes.

The oldest level is a U.S. Patent. Protections are granted for 17 years. If you want to legally propagate that plant, you need the patent-holder's permission. That permission usually involves some stipend on a per-plant basis. Fees between fifty-cents and two-dollars per plant are typical for grape and apple cultivars.

Patent protection is "leaky". One agricultural observer waggishly noted that Honeycrisp (a patented variety) was so desirable because it produced four times the tonnage one would expect given the official sales of trees. What he was really saying was that 3/4 of the Honeycrisp trees in production were propagated without paying University of Minnesota royalties.

Another problem with patents is that they only offer 17 years of production. If it takes four years to bring an orchard into full production and it might take several generations of orchards to develop marketable quantities of fruit, the patent expires just about the time a block-buster cultivar develops strong demand.

The second level of production involves Plant Variety Protection (PVP). PVP offers up to 25 years of protection against unauthorized propagation which is a slight improvement over the 17 years offered by patent protection.

The third level of protection involves Trade-marks. Trade-marks, if maintained, are infinite.

I could buy vines of Corot Noir (a wine grape) and propagate vines after the patent and PVP expire but I cannot sell them as Corot Noir because the name is Trade-marked.

I could sell the plants as NY 70.0809.10 (which is a synonym of Corot Noir) but the growers cannot sell the grapes to a wine-maker as Corot Noir and the wine-maker cannot market the wine as Corot Noir.

That is not a big deal if I am a home winemaker or offer my grapes to other home winemakers. But the big volume is in commercial vineyards and orchards and commercial nurseries.