Milkweed plant family

PUBLIC DOMAIN

Patent expired January 24, 1995. This plant is in the public domain — anyone may propagate and sell it.

Twenty years from the filing date would end on January 18, 1997, but this patent ends 725 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

PP4199

Filed

January 18, 1977

Granted

January 24, 1978

Expires

January 24, 1995

Assignee

B L COBIA INC

Inventor

COBIA BARNELL L; GRIFFITH STEPHEN 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 new plant variety is distinguishable from specimens of the Hoya Carnosa Krinkle 8 variety by a predominance of variegated leaf blades which at the upper epidermal side have a solid green center field and an albino marginal area which is frequently discontinuous, and leaf petioles which in color are dominated by greenish yellow, yellow green, purplish pink, reddish purple, purplish red, pink and/or red hues.

Show the legal claimThe single numbered claim as granted — the legal text that defines what this patent covers.

We claim 1. The new and distinct variety of the Milkweed Family, substantially as herein shown and described, and which in comparison to the Hoya Carnosa `Krinkle 8` variety is characterized by the following combination of principal distinguishing characteristics: 1. A predominance of variegated leaf blades which at the upper epidermal side have a solid green center field and an albino marginal area which is frequently discontinuous, and 2. Leaf petioles which in color are dominated by greenish yellow, yellow green, purplish pink, reddish purple, purplish red, pink and/or red hues.

Read the full patent: US Plant Patent PP4199 in full — the complete specification, every figure, and the file history.