Poinsettia plant

PUBLIC DOMAIN

Patent expired December 28, 1993. This plant is in the public domain — anyone may propagate and sell it.

Twenty years from the filing date would end on March 2, 1996, but this patent ends 795 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

PP4000

Filed

March 2, 1976

Granted

December 28, 1976

Expires

December 28, 1993

Assignee

MIKKELSENS INC

Inventor

MIKKELSEN JAMES 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

1. A new and distinct cultivar of poinsettia plant characterized by the combined characteristics of growth as a single stem or pinched plant; superior growth habit and vigor; large light pink bracts which are broad, thick and self supporting, with the bract head of single stem plants measuring up to 40 cm. in diameter; large cyathias which indicate an increase in ploidy from diploid to tetraploid; long lasting bracts and foliage, and by its relatively slower rooting habits.

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 cultivar of poinsettia plant characterized by the combined characteristics of growth as a single stem or pinched plant; superior growth habit and vigor; large light pink bracts which are broad, thick and self supporting, with the bract head of single stem plants measuring up to 40 cm. in diameter; large cyathias which indicate an increase in ploidy from diploid to tetraploid; long lasting bracts and foliage, and by its relatively slower rooting habits.

Read the full patent: US Plant Patent PP4000 in full — the complete specification, every figure, and the file history.