Muscadine grape

PUBLIC DOMAIN

Patent expired May 31, 1994. This plant is in the public domain — anyone may propagate and sell it.

Twenty years from the filing date would end on September 5, 1995, but this patent ends 462 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

PP4056

Filed

September 5, 1975

Granted

May 31, 1977

Expires

May 31, 1994

Inventor

FRY BYARD OWENS

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

1. The new and distinct hybrid plant variety of the muscadine grape as described and illustrated which is primarily distinguished as to novelty by the unique combination of a very vigorous vine, very large fruit of a dark almost black color wherein said fruit occurs in large clusters of individual berries having a diameter of from about 1 inch to about 1-3/16 inch and the fruit sugar content of the individual berries ranges from about 17.8 to about 22.5 percent.

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

What is claimed is: 1. The new and distinct hybrid plant variety of the muscadine grape as described and illustrated which is primarily distinguished as to novelty by the unique combination of a very vigorous vine, very large fruit of a dark almost black color wherein said fruit occurs in large clusters of individual berries having a diameter of from about 1 inch to about 1-3/16 inch and the fruit sugar content of the individual berries ranges from about 17.8 to about 22.5 percent.

Read the full patent: US Plant Patent PP4056 in full — the complete specification, every figure, and the file history.