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The Patent Garden

US Plant Patent PP4167

Rose plant

PUBLIC DOMAIN

Patent expired December 20, 1994. This plant is in the public domain — anyone may propagate and sell it.

Twenty years from the filing date would end on November 26, 1996, but this patent ends 707 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
PP4167
Filed
November 26, 1976
Granted
December 20, 1977
Expires
December 20, 1994
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

A novel hybrid tea rose cultivar characterized by a vigorous, upright growth habit, white blossoms, and resistance to powdery mildew.

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 a vigorous upright habit of growth, Garnette Brown new foliage maturing to dark green, nearly white buds with a tint of Egyptian Buff and tipped with Carmine, opening to white blooms of 18 to 25 petals, large prickles angled slightly downward and a light fragrance.

Read the full patent: US Plant Patent PP4167 in full — the complete specification, every figure, and the file history.