US Plant Patent PP4552
Rose plant
PUBLIC DOMAIN
Patent expired October 25, 1997. This plant is in the public domain — anyone may propagate and sell it.
Twenty years from the filing date would end on January 8, 1999, but this patent ends 440 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
- PP4552
- Filed
- January 8, 1979
- Granted
- June 24, 1980
- Expires
- October 25, 1997
- Inventor
- WEEKS O L
No cultivar name of record
This patent does not name the plant. Through the 1980s and early 1990s that was still common: naming every new cultivar only became standard practice as plants began to be marketed under brand names. The grant identifies this one by its number and by a written description instead.
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
There is disclosed a new variety of rose of the hybrid tea class which is particularly distinguished by its unique purplish reddish to purplish pink tone, high centered flower of classic open formation, bordered by rim of ruby colored petals, distinct fragrance, larger, waxier foliage leaflets than its parent, Swarthmore, U.S. Plant. Pat. No. 2,444.
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 purplish reddish high centered flower of classic open formation, bordered by a rim of strong purplish red colored petals, waxy foliage leaflets as compared with its parent "Swarthmore" U.S. Plant Pat. No. 2,444, distinct fragrance slightly musky, excellent growing characteristics as a garden and cutting flower.
Read the full patent: US Plant Patent PP4552 in full — the complete specification, every figure, and the file history.