US Plant Patent PP4003
Rose plant
PUBLIC DOMAIN
Patent expired January 4, 1994. This plant is in the public domain — anyone may propagate and sell it.
Twenty years from the filing date would end on February 9, 1996, but this patent ends 766 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
- PP4003
- Filed
- February 9, 1976
- Granted
- January 4, 1977
- Expires
- January 4, 1994
- Inventor
- WEEKS O L
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 variety of rose plant of the hybrid tea class, substantially as herein shown and described, characterized particularly as to novelty by the unique combination of a very vigorous, upright and very symmetrical habit of growth; large-leafed and waxy foliage; very large and many-petaled flowers; a distinctive and attractive soft pink flower color; and an extraordinary flower fragrance in the nature of a heavy permeating perfume.
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 rose plant of the hybrid tea class, substantially as herein shown and described, characterized particularly as to novelty by the unique combination of a very vigorous, upright and very symmetrical habit of growth; large-leafed and waxy foliage; very large and many-petaled flowers; a distinctive and attractive soft pink flower color; and an extraordinary flower fragrance in the nature of a heavy permeating perfume.
Read the full patent: US Plant Patent PP4003 in full — the complete specification, every figure, and the file history.