Plant of the fern family

PUBLIC DOMAIN

Patent expired May 30, 1995. This plant is in the public domain — anyone may propagate and sell it.

Twenty years from the filing date would end on May 9, 1997, but this patent ends 710 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

PP4257

Filed

May 9, 1977

Granted

May 30, 1978

Expires

May 30, 1995

Inventor

MCALLISTER HOWARD G

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 new and distinct plant variety of the fern family that appeared as a vegetative mutation on a plant specimen of the Nephrolepis exaltata `McAllister` variety and like its parent has a notable absence of sori. In comparison to the parent the fronds exhibit a more delicate texture that may be attributed to generally longer pinnae with pinnule margins that exhibit a predominance of pinnately lobed to pinnately divided lobing.

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

I claim: 1. The new and distinct plant variety of the fern family substantially as herein described and illustrated and characterized by a growth habit which provides specimens that have compound bipinnate fronds that grow in a compact rosette arrangement with a noticeable absence of sori, and which, in comparison to specimens of the parent variety, exhibit a more delicate texture that may be attributed to generally longer pinnae with pinnule margins that exhibit a predominance of pinnately lobed to pinnately divided lobing.

Read the full patent: US Plant Patent PP4257 in full — the complete specification, every figure, and the file history.