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The Patent Garden

US Plant Patent PP4072

Peach tree

PUBLIC DOMAIN

Patent expired July 5, 1994. This plant is in the public domain — anyone may propagate and sell it.

Twenty years from the filing date would end on August 2, 1996, but this patent ends 759 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
PP4072
Filed
August 2, 1976
Granted
July 5, 1977
Expires
July 5, 1994
Inventor
NAKAYAMA HITOSHI P

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 variety of peach tree the fruit of which ripens about a week to 10 days earlier than the Red Top variety (unpatented) which the new variety most nearly resembles.

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

Having thus described my new variety of peach tree I claim: 1. The new and distinct variety of peach tree, substantially as shown and described herein, characterized by highly colored, firm, fine grained, yellow-fleshed freestone fruit which reaches maturity a week to 10 days before the peaches of the Red Top variety (unpatented).

Read the full patent: US Plant Patent PP4072 in full — the complete specification, every figure, and the file history.