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The Patent Garden

US Plant Patent PP4240

Chrysanthemum

PUBLIC DOMAIN

Patent expired April 11, 1995. This plant is in the public domain — anyone may propagate and sell it.

Twenty years from the filing date would end on June 3, 1997, but this patent ends 784 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
PP4240
Filed
June 3, 1977
Granted
April 11, 1978
Expires
April 11, 1995
Inventor
MIDDELBURG NICOLAAS

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

A new variety of chrysanthemum plant originating as a sport of Horim (unpatented) characterized by its satiny pure white blooms, vigorous growth, 12 week response, permanence and distinguished from the parent cultivar, Horim, by larger and purer white blooms.

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 chrysanthemum, substantially as described and pictured herein, characterized by its satiny pure white blooms, vigorous growth, 12 week response and permanence, and by having larger bloom and a purer white color than the parent cultivar, Horim.

Read the full patent: US Plant Patent PP4240 in full — the complete specification, every figure, and the file history.