US Plant Patent PP4050
Apple tree
PUBLIC DOMAIN
Patent expired May 10, 1994. This plant is in the public domain — anyone may propagate and sell it.
Twenty years from the filing date would end on October 17, 1995, but this patent ends 525 days earlier — a terminal disclaimer gives term back. A source that calculates twenty years from filing would tell you this plant is still protected when it is already free.
The record
- Patent number
- PP4050
- Filed
- October 17, 1975
- Granted
- May 10, 1977
- Expires
- May 10, 1994
- Inventor
- KAPLAN SAUL L
No cultivar name of record
This patent does not name the plant, and for its era that is ordinary rather than an omission. Before about 1980, breeders frequently patented a plant without giving it a cultivar name at all — the grant identified it by its number, its parentage and a written description of the flower and foliage. Most plant patents from the 1930s to the 1970s have no name in them.
Nothing here is missing from our records: the patent itself states no name. Where one exists we show it, and we do not invent one.
Abstract
1. A new and distinct variety of apple tree, substantially as herein shown and described, characterized particularly as to novelty by its possession of a unique combination of characteristics, including a laterally branched habit with straighter branches and less tendency to meander than usually found in apple trees, fruit having skin of a deep, rich red color and flesh of an attractive cream color, tender, fine-grained, juicy and having present therein pink flecks adding to usual attractiveness, said characteristics being prevalent essentially before maturity is attained.
Show the legal claimThe single numbered claim as granted — the legal text that defines what this patent covers.
I claim: 1. A new and distinct variety of apple tree, substantially as herein shown and described, characterized particularly as to novelty by its possession of a unique combination of characteristics, including a laterally branched habit with straighter branches and less tendency to meander than usually found in apple trees, fruit having skin of a deep, rich red color and flesh of an attractive cream color, tender, fine-grained, juicy and having present therein pink flecks adding to usual attractiveness, said characteristics being prevalent essentially before maturity is attained.
Read the full patent: US Plant Patent PP4050 in full — the complete specification, every figure, and the file history.