Poinsettia plant

PUBLIC DOMAIN

Patent expired December 13, 1994. This plant is in the public domain — anyone may propagate and sell it.

Twenty years from the filing date would end on September 10, 1996, but this patent ends 637 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

PP4164

Filed

September 10, 1976

Granted

December 13, 1977

Expires

December 13, 1994

Assignee

ECKE JR PAUL

Inventor

HEGG THORMOD

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

There is disclosed a new variety of Poinsettia Plant characterized by the short growing and compact plant habit, with a uniform and fast rooting habit, self branching plants with production of multiple blooms without pinching off the terminal buds brighter red bracts than the red bracts of U.S. Plant Pat. No. 2,962, "Annette Hegg", the bract color retaining the brillance much longer when plants are used for home decoration, the production of more and heavier side shoots when grown as a single stem plant which makes them valuable from a commercial standpoint since cuttings are likely to be produced thereby.

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 Poinsettia plant, substantially as herein shown and described, characterized particularly as to novelty by the unique combination of short-growing and compact plant habit, uniform and fast rooting habit, a self-branching habit resulting in the production of multiple blooms without pinching off the terminal buds, good green foliage, attractive brighter red bracts than the normal red bracts of U.S. Plant Pat. No. 2,962, "Annette Hegg", the color of the bracts being more stable and retaining its brilliance much longer when the plants are used for home decoration, and long lasting plant qualities.

Read the full patent: US Plant Patent PP4164 in full — the complete specification, every figure, and the file history.