US Plant Patent PP4118
Pistachio tree
PUBLIC DOMAIN
Patent expired October 4, 1994. This plant is in the public domain — anyone may propagate and sell it.
Twenty years from the filing date would end on September 24, 1996, but this patent ends 721 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
- PP4118
- Filed
- September 24, 1976
- Granted
- October 4, 1977
- Expires
- October 4, 1994
- Inventor
- RUEHLE ELMER C
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 pistachio tree of the Pistachia vera species generally similar in appearance to the unpatented Kerman pistachio tree, but from which it is distinguished in bearing fruit of uniformly large size characterized by having thin shells with a higher percentage of naturally occurring split shells and with the split extending about the apex end of the shell rather than just along the side and which contains a kernel or nut meat having a bright green coloration extending uniformly throughout the meat and which ripens earlier than the Kerman, Red Allepo and Trabonella pistachios and at about the same time as the Bronte pistachio all of which to the applicant's knowledge are unpatented.
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 pistachio tree of the Pistachia vera species substantially as illustrated and described which is generally similar in appearance to the Kerman pistachio tree and which produces fruit of uniformly large size characterized by having relatively thin shells with a higher percentage of natural shell splitting than the Kerman pistachio with the splitting occurring about the apex ends of the shells, which contain nut meat having a high meat to shell ratio by size and weight and characterized by a brilliant green exterior coloration extending in lighter shades throughout the meat and which ripen earlier than the Kerman, Red Allepo and Trabonella pistachios and at about the same time as the Bronte pistachio.
Read the full patent: US Plant Patent PP4118 in full — the complete specification, every figure, and the file history.