US Plant Patent PP4223
Kentucky bluegrass
PUBLIC DOMAIN
Patent expired March 14, 1995. This plant is in the public domain — anyone may propagate and sell it.
Twenty years from the filing date would end on March 7, 1997, but this patent ends 724 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
- PP4223
- Filed
- March 7, 1977
- Granted
- March 14, 1978
- Expires
- March 14, 1995
- Assignee
- SCOTT & SONS CO O M
- Inventor
- FUNK JR CYRIL REED
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 variety of Kentucky bluegrass which exhibits good resistance to common lawn grass diseases including leaf spot, leaf rust, stripe smut and powdery mildew, has an attractive, rich, dark green color and a turf-type growth habit.
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 Kentucky bluegrass plant, substantially as shown and described, characterized by good resistance to many important lawn grass diseases, good turf performance, an attractive dark green color, good rhizome and tiller development and moderately wide leaves.
Read the full patent: US Plant Patent PP4223 in full — the complete specification, every figure, and the file history.