US Plant Patent PP4140
Plum tree
PUBLIC DOMAIN
Patent expired November 1, 1994. This plant is in the public domain — anyone may propagate and sell it.
Twenty years from the filing date would end on December 29, 1996, but this patent ends 789 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
- PP4140
- Filed
- December 29, 1976
- Granted
- November 1, 1977
- Expires
- November 1, 1994
- Inventor
- SURABIAN DENNIS
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 generally, similar to the Laroda plum tree (unpatented), which bears yellow fleshed, freestone fruit having a skin coloration which appears earlier and is much darker when ripe than that of the Laroda.
Show the legal claimThe single numbered claim as granted — the legal text that defines what this patent covers.
Having thus described and illustrated my new variety of plum tree, what is new and desired to be secured by Letters Patent is: 1. A new and distinct variety of plum tree, substantially as illustrated and described, characterized by its vigorous growth and regular bearing of large, yellow fleshed when ripe, freestone fruit whose flesh becomes brilliantly red in storage; and by its general resemblance to the Laroda (unpatented) plum tree from which it is distinguished by its earlier appearing final skin coloration and from which it is further distinguished by such coloration being much darker, almost black.
Read the full patent: US Plant Patent PP4140 in full — the complete specification, every figure, and the file history.