US Plant Patent PP3991
Plum tree
PUBLIC DOMAIN
Patent expired December 14, 1993. This plant is in the public domain — anyone may propagate and sell it.
Twenty years from the filing date would end on February 9, 1996, but this patent ends 787 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
- PP3991
- Filed
- February 9, 1976
- Granted
- December 14, 1976
- Expires
- December 14, 1993
- Assignee
- BURCHELL NURSERY INC
- Inventor
- ANDERSON FREDERIC W
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 plum tree of medium size, upright to spreading, open, foliated with medium size, obovate, medium thick, medium green leaves having a coarsely serrate margin, and alternate, reniform glands positioned on the base of the blade, and a regular and productive bearer of large to medium size, globose, freestone to semi-freestone fruit having deep blue skin with a silvery-grey bloom, and yellow-green, firm to medium texture, crisp, meaty, melting flesh high in sugar content.
Show the legal claimThe single numbered claim as granted — the legal text that defines what this patent covers.
I claim: 1. A new and distinct variety of plum tree, substantially as illustrated and described, characterized by the bearing of fruit, of best eating quality, which is very high in sugar content whereby, for any use, no supplementary sweetening agent is required.
Read the full patent: US Plant Patent PP3991 in full — the complete specification, every figure, and the file history.