US Plant Patent PP4069
Rubber plant (Ficus Gold King)
PUBLIC DOMAIN
Patent expired July 5, 1994. This plant is in the public domain — anyone may propagate and sell it.
Twenty years from the filing date would end on August 12, 1996, but this patent ends 769 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
- PP4069
- Filed
- August 12, 1976
- Granted
- July 5, 1977
- Expires
- July 5, 1994
- Assignee
- CERRO GORDO INC
- Inventor
- ITO TOKUYASU; IKUTA HIDEO
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 rubber plant exhibiting variegated foliage and resembling the known Ficus elastica Roxb. var. decora tricolor hort., but bearing leaves exhibiting very narrow dark-green borders and light-yellow interiors and being smaller in size. The leaf blades are of an ovate shape with a thick coriaceous texture and with wavy edges. Propagation of the rubber plant by using cuttings is difficult and even impossible, therefore, air layering is employed.
Show the legal claimThe single numbered claim as granted — the legal text that defines what this patent covers.
What we claim is: 1. A new and distinct variety of Ficus elastica Roxb. var. decora tricolor hort., substantially as herein shown and described, characterized over the known rubber plant having variegated foliage, Ficus elastica Roxb. var. decora tricolor hort., in that leaves are smaller in size, the leaf blade has an ovate shape with a thick coriaceous texture and exhibits a very narrow dark-green area appearing on the edge of the leaf blade and a light-yellow area appearing at the interior of the leaf blade, the boundary between the dark-green border area and the light-yellow interior area is very distinct; the peripheral edge of the leaf blade is wavy; the internode length is shorter; the rate of growth is lower and, since propagation by using cuttings is difficult, air layering is employed.
Read the full patent: US Plant Patent PP4069 in full — the complete specification, every figure, and the file history.