Flowering crab apple tree

PUBLIC DOMAIN

Patent expired April 12, 1994. This plant is in the public domain — anyone may propagate and sell it.

Twenty years from the filing date would end on April 20, 1996, but this patent ends 739 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

PP4038

Filed

April 20, 1976

Granted

April 12, 1977

Expires

April 12, 1994

Assignee

LAKE COUNTY NURSERY EXCHANGE I

Inventor

ZAMPINI JAMES W

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 flowering Malus crab apple tree, substantially as herein shown and described, characterized particularly by an upright, semi-dwarf growth habit, an arching and weeping effect of the branches, attractive pinkish colored flowers and abundant bright dark red colored fruits that may hang all winter, and which has apparent resistance to diseases which are common to most Malus species.

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 variety of flowering Malus crab apple tree, substantially as herein shown and described, characterized particularly by an upright, semi-dwarf growth habit, an arching and weeping effect of the branches, attractive pinkish colored flowers and abundant bright dark red colored fruits that may hang all winter, and which has apparent resistance to diseases which are common to most Malus species.

Read the full patent: US Plant Patent PP4038 in full — the complete specification, every figure, and the file history.