I think you have to register the name with the ARS. Check their website.

You can register it with the ARS if you want it to be eligible to be shown in ARS shows, and/or if you want to see it in print (eventually, some day, perhaps, maybe...) in an ARS publication. Or, you can document it and have it entered into the Help Me Find-Roses database. There isn't a pink mutation of Medallion in the database, so you may be the first to discover it. With all the necessary information (what is shown on the Medallion page) regarding the rose, it can easily and quickly be entered there, complete with all of your information as the "discoverer". Photos of how it differs and what it looks like would be nice, too. Recently, a friend discovered a striped sport of Intrigue. With her information, I've entered it as "Intriguing". As neither of you are likely to patent your roses, nothing else is really required. If you're interested, please let me know and I will be happy to get you set up with the rose page and how to enter everything. Congratulations! Kim

Here is a link that might be useful: Intriguing

Here it is as a more uniform pink but

sometimes it shows a blended color. There seem to be 2 kinds of Medallion out there. One is ruffly and one is not. This pink sport is from the ruffly kind which I looked an looked for. I wanted to share this pink form with the fans of Medallion.

Kim I like your suggestion. Can someone rename this and patent it even if I name it first on HMF?

another view

I really want to share this freely but don't want someone to just rename it for their own gain. You can see how big the flowers are in my hand just like Medallion can be.

This post was edited by kittymoonbeam on Thu, Nov 13, 14 at 12:50

That's really pretty, Kitty! I hope it's as great a rose as Medallion was here. That thing was a HORSE with HUGE flowers, but it was also growing in a climate it adored. Of course anyone can name virtually anything they want, virtually anything they want. Patenting is an expensive process, quite expensive, even if you do it all yourself without an attorney. The new laws regarding plant patents state that from the "official date of introduction", which this post is, you have only one year in which to patent the rose, so this post starts the clock ticking. That's why you don't see seedling photos from many breeders unless they have no intentions of patenting them or feel they aren't worth the expense. When you figure it can easily cost you $2,000+ to patent the thing, and you'd be lucky to recoup .50 a plant, the introducer would need to sell at least four-thousand plants just to pay the patent fees. If this mutation avoided Medallion's disease issues in higher disease pressure climates, that might be worth considering. It doesn't seem likely it would be worth the expense, does it? So, you shouldn't worry about anyone else patenting it for their own gain. There isn't anything you can do about producers picking up and carrying the rose without asking you, without a patent. Registering it with the ARS simply gives you prior claim to whatever name they approve for it, but even that doesn't prevent anyone from introducing a different rose with the SAME name. They simply wouldn't be able to register it with the ARS with that name. Commercially, that means nothing.

There are only three ways to "protect" the rose.

1. Never let it out of your hands to anyone.
2. Patent it then police it vigorously to force anyone not playing by the patent rules to pay. (expensive and laborious)
3 Trademark the name, which simply prevents anyone from using the NAME without paying royalties for the "privelege". But, it does nothing to prevent them from propagating and selling the rose freely. They just can't call it YOUR name without paying for it. That is the case with all the Austin roses you have seen sold as "AUSpat", "AUSblush", etc.

Sure, someone COULD patent it after you've listed it on HMF, as they could any sport. Mutations occur all the time, all over the world. It has been common for the same, or virtually identical mutations to occur from the same rose in multiple places, virtually at the same time, as well as over a period of years. I isolated a solid pink sport of Festival Fanfare, the striped sport of the solid orange, Fred Loads. I submitted it to the ARS for registration years ago as "Festival Pink". The same year, someone in England isolated virtually the same mutation from the same rose and called it "Loads of Pink". I was told Tom Carruth was on the registration committee which considered the two applications and helped convince them to permit both. It was felt as they were half way around the world from each other, no one would ever find them confusing. It is possible your pink sport has occur, or will occur, for someone else, somewhere else. They could investigate patenting it, but it hardly seems worth the effort. Personally, I wouldn't worry about it.

If you have all the comparative information about your sport versus Medallion (how it differs, how it's similar), (bloom size, foliage size/color, disease susceptibility/resistance, plant size, fragrance, color classification, name and location of discoverer and when, etc, and would like to send it to me, I'll be happy to get it up on HMF with you as discoverer. There are many questions asked to insure sufficient information is added to the database and the more of them I can answer, the more interesting and enjoyable the rose page is. I think we've all encountered those which seemed they might hold information, only to find a danged name and very little else. Frustrating! Kim

I think I should do this because it is so pretty and others might like growing it. My fear has been these last 5 years that the plant could die and be lost until some Medallion somewhere gives a pink version. I'd rather share it and let people enjoy it. I don't care if someone buds it and sells it but I hope that they would treat it like a non patent and hold the cost down. I didn't do anything except to root the cutting. The breeders of Medallion did all the work and I'm grateful for that because it's one of my favorites. I'd love to see this rose on Fort. It's pretty impressive own root but then Medallion has always liked it here.

I wish I could say that it was a better plant but it's just the same except for the beautiful difference in color. It lightens to a paler version as it ages just like Medallion. I remember the first time I saw Medallion in the rose beds at Cal Poly Pomona. It was after a rain in fall ( remember those?) in the 80s and the plants were tall but bending down with the weight of the water over the path. The big beautiful flowers on that day when the sky was sparking blue and full of clouds and the air smelled so clean. Then I was on a quest to find that rose! If only there was a tag on a cane somewhere. But they were old plants and the tags had been lost years ago. So I just called it Delicate Beauty and started searching for it. I feel so grateful for this sport and even though Medallion gets maligned when I put up pictures, it will always be one of my favorites.

I don't blame you! Medallion was always a huge bush with huge flowers in Newhall. It just grew and flowered with nothing special provided for it. Seeing how rust prone it was at the beach was heartbreaking, but give it drier heat and sun with decent soil and sufficient water and it is a thing of beauty. Congratulations on the sport! Kim

Kitty, that is a lovely find enjoy deciding on the name

Kitty,

You need to get budwood to someone who can bud it to a rootstock and grow it. You need to see if it is stable. I tried cuttings and my plant wasn't stable.