US Plant Patent PP4096
Apple tree
PUBLIC DOMAIN
Patent expired August 30, 1994. This plant is in the public domain — anyone may propagate and sell it.
Twenty years from the filing date would end on October 6, 1996, but this patent ends 768 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
- PP4096
- Filed
- October 6, 1976
- Granted
- August 30, 1977
- Expires
- August 30, 1994
- Assignee
- HILLTOP ORCHARDS & NURSERIES I
- Inventor
- SIMMONS DAN E
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
This invention relates to a limb mutation of the Law strain of Red Rome apple, and differs therefrom by its dwarf habit and spurring.
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 trees substantially as described and illustrated in this application.
Read the full patent: US Plant Patent PP4096 in full — the complete specification, every figure, and the file history.