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The Patent Garden

US Plant Patent PP4124

Begonia plant

PUBLIC DOMAIN

Patent expired October 11, 1994. This plant is in the public domain — anyone may propagate and sell it.

Twenty years from the filing date would end on August 17, 1996, but this patent ends 676 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
PP4124
Filed
August 17, 1976
Granted
October 11, 1977
Expires
October 11, 1994
Inventor
ROHDE HANS-JOACHIM

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 novel begonia originated as a mutation of Ballerina, and has bright yellow tepals.

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 cultivar of begonia plant characterized particularly as to uniqueness by the combined characteristics of bright yellow double flowers having a size up to 6 cm. in diameter when mature, with the flowers having an odd number of tepals; very fast growing habit which requires growth regulation for height control in high light and high temperature conditions, and long lasting nature of the individual flowers.

Read the full patent: US Plant Patent PP4124 in full — the complete specification, every figure, and the file history.