US Plant Patent PP4016
Rose plant
PUBLIC DOMAIN
Patent expired February 8, 1994. This plant is in the public domain — anyone may propagate and sell it.
Twenty years from the filing date would end on March 1, 1996, but this patent ends 752 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
- PP4016
- Filed
- March 1, 1976
- Granted
- February 8, 1977
- Expires
- February 8, 1994
- Assignee
- JOSEPH H HILL COMPANY
- Inventor
- BYRUM ROY 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
A new variety of rose plant, suitable for greenhouse culture for the commercial production of cut flowers, particularly distinguished by the warm nasturtium red general color effect of its very double, medium small blossoms. This plant is also characterized by its abundant and continuous production of flowers, which have a slight spicy fragrance and an excellent vase-life as cut flowers, and by its vigorous, upright and much branched growth.
Show the legal claimThe single numbered claim as granted — the legal text that defines what this patent covers.
I claim: 1. A new and distinctive variety of rose plant substantially as herein shown and described, characterized by the distinctive Nasturtium Red to Empire Rose general color effect of the open flowers, by its slightly spicy flower fragrance, its abundant and continuous flower production, and its vigorous year around growth habit.
Read the full patent: US Plant Patent PP4016 in full — the complete specification, every figure, and the file history.