I think that the prevalence of noids has less to do with the price of registration and more to do with the fact that these plants are being bred and cloned for the pot plant market. Why bother to put a name tag in a pot or even keep serious records about the hybrid names, when all you are producing is essentially living boquets? Most people toss NOID orchids after they bloom. It is not about registration costs so much as it is that NOIDs are marketed to people who don't particularly care to take the effort and time to actually grow orchids, but just want some colour or home decortion. It's the same reason that you rarely see bromeliads or poinsettias in the stores with more than "Hybrid poinsettia" or whatever on the tag.
For my part, I'm an orchid snob. I collect high-quality plants, mostly species. The sort of things I grow just aren't sold as NOIDs very often. Even if they were, I refuse to buy NOIDs. Supporting the producers of NOIDs is what is slowly killing the orchid hybridization industry in the west. True collectors tend not to purchase NOIDs, but most people are growing for pretty flowers. The small-time hybridizers from whom most innovation originates just cannot compete on a commercial scale with a taiwanese cloning operation that pumps out 10,000 clones of a plant in three years.
Meanwhile, as for the factual expense of registration, I imagine most countries would consider that a legitimate business expense for an orchid breeder. For a commercial breeder, it is something that can be written off on the taxes.
-Cj
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