US Plant Patent PP4141
Nectarine tree
PUBLIC DOMAIN
Patent expired November 1, 1994. This plant is in the public domain — anyone may propagate and sell it.
Twenty years from the filing date would end on December 29, 1996, but this patent ends 789 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
- PP4141
- Filed
- December 29, 1976
- Granted
- November 1, 1977
- Expires
- November 1, 1994
- Inventor
- SURABIAN DENNIS
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 nectarine tree, generally similar to the Fantasia Nectarine Tree (unpatented), which bears yellow fleshed, freestone fruit from fourteen to nineteen days earlier than the Fantasia when grown under the same conditions.
Show the legal claimThe single numbered claim as granted — the legal text that defines what this patent covers.
Having thus described and illustrated my new variety of nectarine tree, what is new and desired to be secured by Letters Patent is: 1. A new and distinct variety of nectarine tree, substantially as illustrated and described, characterized by its vigorous growth; its bearing of large, freestone, yellow fleshed fruit; and by its general resemblance to the Fantasia (unpatented) Nectarine Tree, but from which it is distinguished by its fruit ripening from 14 to 19 days earlier.
Read the full patent: US Plant Patent PP4141 in full — the complete specification, every figure, and the file history.