US Plant Patent PP4145
Magnolia tree
PUBLIC DOMAIN
Patent expired November 8, 1994. This plant is in the public domain — anyone may propagate and sell it.
Twenty years from the filing date would end on November 15, 1996, but this patent ends 738 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
- PP4145
- Filed
- November 15, 1976
- Granted
- November 8, 1977
- Expires
- November 8, 1994
- Assignee
- BROOKLYN BOTAN GARDEN CORP
- Inventor
- SPECHT CARL H
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 magnolia tree characterized by distinctive flowers, the tepals of which are a clear yellow with the outermost whorl slightly tinged with green.
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 magnolia tree as herein described and illustrated, characterized by the tepals of the flower being a clear yellow with the outermost whorl slightly tinged with green.
Read the full patent: US Plant Patent PP4145 in full — the complete specification, every figure, and the file history.