War of the carnations as farmers buttonholed on royalties – Leo Lewis

From Times Online (link):

THEY have clashed over history books, fought legal skirmishes over trade tariffs and nearly come to blows over gas-drilling rights. Now a new dispute has erupted between Japan and China ” the carnation wars.

From the delicate Madame Augier to the spray of Atletic Schubert, dozens of varieties of carnation have become entangled in a feud that will soon be contested at the highest diplomatic levels.

Japanese breeders assert that their precious strains are being grown illegally by Chinese farmers in a grand-scale intellectual property theft tantamount to DVD piracy or fake Gucci handbags.