US Plant Patent PP4077
Grapevine
PUBLIC DOMAIN
Patent expired July 12, 1994. This plant is in the public domain — anyone may propagate and sell it.
Twenty years from the filing date would end on September 27, 1996, but this patent ends 808 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
- PP4077
- Filed
- September 27, 1976
- Granted
- July 12, 1977
- Expires
- July 12, 1994
- Inventor
- ANDERSON FREDERIC 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
A grapevine, of the Thompson Seedless class and adapted for like uses, which is of medium vigor, medium in trunk size, foliated with medium size cordate leaves having five lobes, blooming mid-season with fertile flowers, and productive to medium productive on medium length, straight canes of early ripening, medium size, single-shouldered, tapering clusters of seedless berries having excellent keeping quality and very good shipping quality.
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 grapevine, of the Thompson Seedless class, substantially as illustrated and described, which is of medium vigor, medium in trunk size, foliated with medium size cordate leaves having five lobes, blooming mid-season with fertile flowers, and productive to medium productive on medium length, straight canes of early ripening, medium size, single-shouldered, tapering clusters of seedless berries having excellent keeping quality and very good shipping quality; the variety, in comparison to the Thompson Seedless resembles the same in most respects, but ripens about 2 weeks earlier, and, in comparison to the Perlette, has larger and more open clusters with more uniform size of the berries, and ripens about 1 week earlier.
Read the full patent: US Plant Patent PP4077 in full — the complete specification, every figure, and the file history.