US Plant Patent PP4159
Apple tree
PUBLIC DOMAIN
Patent expired November 29, 1994. This plant is in the public domain — anyone may propagate and sell it.
Twenty years from the filing date would end on November 15, 1996, but this patent ends 717 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
- PP4159
- Filed
- November 15, 1976
- Granted
- November 29, 1977
- Expires
- November 29, 1994
- Assignee
- CALLAHAN CLAUD, MCCORMICK MARJORIE
- Inventor
- SILVERS WILLIAM 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
There is disclosed an apple variety in which the tree is more dwarf than the parent with many fruit spurs, larger, deeper green, heavier and tougher leaves than "Hi Early" Delicious, long fruit, maturing and ready to harvest two weeks ahead of "Hi Early" and greater sugar test percentage with long-keeping quality.
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 the unique combination of a more dwarf tree with many fruit spurs and larger, deeper green color, heavier and tougher leaves than the variety "Hi Early Delicious", bright cherry red striped early color with exceptionally long fruit, the date of maturity and ability to harvest two weeks ahead of the Hi Early parent variety, the coloring beginning with red striping finishing into solid red 3 weeks ahead of its recommended harvest season, very juicy extra firm fruit with greater sugar test percentage than the Hi Early parent variety, and the ability to keep fruit for much longer periods of time than other varieties, together with its disease resistance.
Read the full patent: US Plant Patent PP4159 in full — the complete specification, every figure, and the file history.