US Plant Patent PP4185
Crape myrtle
PUBLIC DOMAIN
Patent expired January 10, 1995. This plant is in the public domain — anyone may propagate and sell it.
Twenty years from the filing date would end on April 14, 1997, but this patent ends 825 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
- PP4185
- Filed
- April 14, 1977
- Granted
- January 10, 1978
- Expires
- January 10, 1995
- Assignee
- CHOPIN & WRIGHT NURSERY LTD
- Inventor
- CHOPIN DAVID EARL
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 and distinct variety of the Lagerstroemia genus characterized as to novelty by a dwarfness in size, lack of continual vertical growth after maturity and a weeping growth habit at full maturity.
Show the legal claimThe single numbered claim as granted — the legal text that defines what this patent covers.
I claim: 1. A new distinct variety of Lagerstroemia indica plant substantially as shown and described, characterized by the distinctive White color, its height up to 10 to 20 inches, substantially no vertical growth at full maturity, and a weeping growth habit at full maturity.
Read the full patent: US Plant Patent PP4185 in full — the complete specification, every figure, and the file history.