US Plant Patent PP3989
Grapevine
PUBLIC DOMAIN
Patent expired December 14, 1993. This plant is in the public domain — anyone may propagate and sell it.
Twenty years from the filing date would end on January 14, 1996, but this patent ends 761 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
- PP3989
- Filed
- January 14, 1976
- Granted
- December 14, 1976
- Expires
- December 14, 1993
- Inventor
- TRIPLETT FAY 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
A table-wine variety of grapevine which is vigorous, semi-upright, open, hardy, foliated with medium-size, cordate leaves, and very productive on straight, medium length, medium thick canes, of medium-to-large size, medium length, broad, tapering, regular, loose-to-compact clusters having long stems; the clusters--borne two to three per cane--being short conical in form, and the berries of the clusters being ellipsoidal, strongly adherent, medium size, uniform, black with a thick blue-grey bloom, and having translucent, juicy, greenish flesh, the flesh, of good quality for wine production, being soft, tender, sub-acid, and vinous.
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 table-wine variety of grapevine, substantially as illustrated and described, which is vigorous, semi-upright, open, hardy, foliated with medium-size, cordate leaves, and very productive on straight, medium length, medium thick canes, of medium-to-large size, medium length, broad, tapering, reguoar, loose-to-compact clusters having long stems; the clusters--borne two to three per cane--being short conical in form, and the berries of the clusters being ellipsoidal, strongly adherent, medium size, uniform, black with a thick blue-grey bloom, and having translucent, juicy, greenish flesh, the flesh, of good quality for wine production, being soft, tender, sub-acid, and vinous; the variety being more productive, with larger clusters, and ripening earlier than the Ruby Cabernet.
Read the full patent: US Plant Patent PP3989 in full — the complete specification, every figure, and the file history.