US Plant Patent PP4643
Plum tree
PUBLIC DOMAIN
Patent expired September 4, 1999. This plant is in the public domain — anyone may propagate and sell it.
No term adjustment or disclaimer is recorded against this patent, so this is the full statutory term — twenty years from the filing date.
The record
- Patent number
- PP4643
- Filed
- September 4, 1979
- Granted
- February 10, 1981
- Expires
- September 4, 1999
- Inventor
- MULLIGAN JAMES T
No cultivar name of record
This patent does not name the plant. Through the 1980s and early 1990s that was still common: naming every new cultivar only became standard practice as plants began to be marketed under brand names. The grant identifies this one by its number and by a written description instead.
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 which heavily and regularly bears fruit having very dark, almost black, purplish-red skin and which is uniformly of substantially globose shape.
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 particularly as to novelty by its heavy bloom and its heavy and regular bearing of fruit which has a very dark, almost black, purplish-red colored skin and which is uniformly of substantially globose form and generally characterized by its bearing of medium sized, amber-fleshed, fruit which ripens in early midseason.
Read the full patent: US Plant Patent PP4643 in full — the complete specification, every figure, and the file history.