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The Patent Garden

US Plant Patent PP4148

Pear tree

PUBLIC DOMAIN

Patent expired November 15, 1994. This plant is in the public domain — anyone may propagate and sell it.

Twenty years from the filing date would end on May 10, 1996, but this patent ends 542 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
PP4148
Filed
May 10, 1976
Granted
November 15, 1977
Expires
November 15, 1994
Inventor
CORDY CLIFFORD B

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 new variety of pear is primarily distinguished by its dark red fruit with flesh free of grit cells.

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

What is claimed is: 1. A new and distinct variety of pear tree, substantially as shown and described herein, distinguished by the physical characteristics of the fruit including its shape and overall dark red coloration of the fruit skin.

Read the full patent: US Plant Patent PP4148 in full — the complete specification, every figure, and the file history.