Golden boston fern

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 March 10, 1996, but this patent ends 719 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

PP4023

Filed

March 10, 1976

Granted

March 22, 1977

Expires

March 22, 1994

Inventor

MILLER ROBERT O

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

This invention relates to a new and distinct plant which is a sport of Nephrolepsis exaltata bostoniensis.

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 Boston fern having the characteristics of Boston fern but differing in that it is yellow to golden color, and has a growth rate approximately 60 percent that of Boston fern.

Read the full patent: US Plant Patent PP4023 in full — the complete specification, every figure, and the file history.