US Plant Patent PP3998
Rose plant
PUBLIC DOMAIN
Patent expired December 21, 1993. This plant is in the public domain — anyone may propagate and sell it.
Twenty years from the filing date would end on November 24, 1995, but this patent ends 703 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
- PP3998
- Filed
- November 24, 1975
- Granted
- December 21, 1976
- Expires
- December 21, 1993
- Assignee
- JACKSON & PERKINS CO
- Inventor
- WARRINER WILLIAM A
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 rose plant of the hybrid tea class, substantially as herein shown and described, characterized particularly as to novelty by the unique combination of its medium green, leathery textured foliage; vigorous upright and open habit of growth; flowers of 20 to 30 large round petals; flower color of Orient Pink, when protected from the sun before opening, darkening to Rose Opal when fully open.
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 rose plant of the hybrid tea class, substantially as herein shown and described, characterized particularly as to novelty by the unique combination of its medium green, leathery textured foliage; vigorous upright and open habit of growth; flowers of 20 to 30 large round petals; flower color of Orient Pink, when protected from the sun before opening, darkening to Rose Opal when fully open.
Read the full patent: US Plant Patent PP3998 in full — the complete specification, every figure, and the file history.