If they’re actually Queen and King it is a scam. But at least with King you’re getting the best by any name. Queen isn’t worth growing to my taste.
So how do they taste?
Once Flavor Queen went off patent, they were free to propagate it and sell it, but they still wouldn’t be able to use the Flavor Queen name due to the Trademark. So throw a new name on it and it will stand out in a big retail store without having to spend any money developing it.
This type of naming must be very frustrating to those gardeners who have limited space and end up planting two of the same tree. I know up here, the plant propagation law states that the original name that the plant was registered under to obtain Canadian plant breeders rights must accompany the new name on the tag. I don’t think it is actually enforced though.
It was a little bit dry but sweet.
What’s frustrating is that the tag depicted an apricot-like fruit with plum leaves, then it turns out to be Flavor Queen Pluot.
old thread I know but small correction - zaiger actually stands out as a major breeder that doesn’t generally use trademarks with individual varieties (they do with a few, plus of course on the word “pluot”). DWN for their part plays along and generally doesn’t add their own trademarked name to zaiger stuff either
the 2nd nursery was surely trying to avoid the trademark shenanigans that plague the industry but if they’d done their research they’d have known that they were in the clear and could have used the name “flavor queen” (plumcot)
one clue is in the patent: using a variety name in a plant patent prevents later getting a (legitimate) us trademark on that name:
this makes it all the more frustrating for gardeners because there was no encumbrance in this case to just keeping the original name and saving everyone time