US Plant Patent PP4094
Doyle's Blackberry
PUBLIC DOMAIN
Patent expired August 23, 1994. This plant is in the public domain — anyone may propagate and sell it.
Twenty years from the filing date would end on November 11, 1996, but this patent ends 811 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
- PP4094
- Filed
- November 11, 1976
- Granted
- August 23, 1977
- Expires
- August 23, 1994
- Inventor
- DOYLE THOMAS 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
The invention relates to a new and distinct variety of Blackberry plant most nearly resembling the Wild Blackberry which exhibits (1) an absence of thorns or prickles, (2) the common occurrence of palmately compound leaves having five leaflets, (3) sturdy canes which support an unusually large upright-arching plant, (4) unusually long trailing stems, and (5) substantially round berries which form in an unusually abundant quantity and ripen over an unusually extended period.
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 Blackberry plant what is claimed as new and desired to be secured by Letters Patent is set forth in the following claim: 1. A new and distinct variety of Blackberry plant most nearly resembling the Wild Blackberry substantially as shown and described, characterized particularly as to novelty by the unique combination of (1) an absence of thorns or prickles, (2) the common occurrence of palmately compound leaves having five leaflets, (3) sturdy canes which support an unusually large upright-arching plant, (4) unusually long trailing stems, and (5) substantially round berries which form in an unusually abundant quantity and ripen over an unusually extended period.
Read the full patent: US Plant Patent PP4094 in full — the complete specification, every figure, and the file history.