US Plant Patent PP4222
Rose plant
PUBLIC DOMAIN
Patent expired March 14, 1995. This plant is in the public domain — anyone may propagate and sell it.
Twenty years from the filing date would end on January 3, 1997, but this patent ends 661 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
- PP4222
- Filed
- January 3, 1977
- Granted
- March 14, 1978
- Expires
- March 14, 1995
- Assignee
- JACKSON & PERKINS CO
- Inventor
- DICKSON ALEXANDER PATRICK CUMI
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 hybrid tea rose variety having bright red flowers opening from dark red buds, borne on an upright, heavily branched plant.
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 vigorous, unusually upright but heavily branched plant; dark red flower bud; bright red open flower of 20 to 25 petals; slight fragrance; strong heavy canes with few thorns and better than average resistance to rose powdery mildew.
Read the full patent: US Plant Patent PP4222 in full — the complete specification, every figure, and the file history.