[Opinion] War of Roses

Rose is one of the most loved flowers and often called the `queen of flowers.` It is believed that mankind first began to grow roses in 2,000 BC. Historical records and mural paintings show that ancient Babylonians, Egyptians, Greeks and Chinese people also grew roses. At first, they were mostly used for perfumes or medicines and later adopted for gardening. In Roman era, ruling-class people used them for decoration. It is said that Egyptian queen Cleo Petra filled the floor of her palace with roses for his lover Roman general Antonius. Rose is indeed known as a symbol of `burning love` or `passion.`

▷In middle ages, royal and noble families often used roses as their family symbol. In the 15th century England, two noble families waged a war against each other for 30 years to decide which would succeed the throne. Historians call the feud as the war of roses since the both of them were using roses to represent their identities. The three decades of battles between the Lancaster represented by a red rose and the York represented by a white rose came to an end as the former defeated the latter. Henry Tudor, a man who led the Lancaster to a victory, ended the feud by marrying a woman of the York. And it became hard to tell which was the winner and which was the loser.

▷A present-day war of roses that continued for 6 years between Germany and Korea recently drew to an end. The Supreme Court stroke down the lower court ruling that the Korea Flower Growers Association is guilty of infringing the patent right held by Germany-based seed-breeding company Cordes, and sent the case back to the patent court. The disputed started 6 years ago centering on `Red Sandra,` a trademark the German firm filed for its red rose breed. The ruling said that the court found it hard to grant the German firm a right to use the name exclusively since Korean flower growers first began to grow the breed 11 years ago.

▷Exports of roses in the country were worth around $100,000 in 1997 and jumped to $10 million last year. Mainstream items are mostly those developed by foreign breeders. And Red Sandra is one of them and is enjoying great popularity among people of all kinds. If they had failed in this case, therefore, flower growers would have been hit hard. Yet, it seems that the problem has just begun. Roses cannot be an exception in intellectual property dispute. Businesses across the world are aggressively seeking intellectual property rights, and we might lose this battle of roses in the end if we fail to develop our own breeds.

Mun Myung-ho, Editorial Writer, munmh97@donga.com