Distinct variety of plum plant

PUBLIC DOMAIN

Patent expired March 22, 1994. This plant is in the public domain — anyone may propagate and sell it.

Twenty years from the filing date would end on December 10, 1995, but this patent ends 628 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

PP4024

Filed

December 10, 1975

Granted

March 22, 1977

Expires

March 22, 1994

Inventor

PAUL RONALD

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

1. A new and distinct variety of plum substantially as illustrated and described, which is generally similar to the Casselman plum but is distinguishable therefrom primarily by its fruit having a noticeably lighter bloom, giving the skin a brighter, darker red color, and by its fruit ripening 3 to 5 days earlier, and being slightly larger and more oblong.

Show the legal claimThe single numbered claim as granted — the legal text that defines what this patent covers.

Having thus described and illustrated my new variety of plum tree, what is claimed is: 1. A new and distinct variety of plum substantially as illustrated and described, which is generally similar to the Casselman plum but is distinguishable therefrom primarily by its fruit having a noticeably lighter bloom, giving the skin a brighter, darker red color, and by its fruit ripening 3 to 5 days earlier, and being slightly larger and more oblong.

Read the full patent: US Plant Patent PP4024 in full — the complete specification, every figure, and the file history.