US Plant Patent PP4161
Orange tree
PUBLIC DOMAIN
Patent expired December 6, 1994. This plant is in the public domain — anyone may propagate and sell it.
Twenty years from the filing date would end on December 6, 1996, but this patent ends 731 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
- PP4161
- Filed
- December 6, 1976
- Granted
- December 6, 1977
- Expires
- December 6, 1994
- Inventor
- THORO ANDREW
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
This relates to a novel variety of Temple Orange characterized by being seedless.
Show the legal claimThe single numbered claim as granted — the legal text that defines what this patent covers.
Having thus disclosed my invention, I claim: 1. A new and distinct variety of Temple orange tree, substantially as described, characterized particularly by the seedless quality of the fruit.
Read the full patent: US Plant Patent PP4161 in full — the complete specification, every figure, and the file history.