US Plant Patent PP4187
Schefflera
PUBLIC DOMAIN
Patent expired January 17, 1995. This plant is in the public domain — anyone may propagate and sell it.
Twenty years from the filing date would end on June 16, 1996, but this patent ends 516 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
- PP4187
- Filed
- June 16, 1976
- Granted
- January 17, 1978
- Expires
- January 17, 1995
- Assignee
- SCHEFFLERA UNLIMITED INC
- Inventor
- MASTALER JOHN
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
There is disclosed a new and distinct variety of Brassaia actinophylla, more commonly known as Schefflera, characterized by the extensive and attractive variegations which were found in the parent and which are dominant in reproductions.
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 Schefflera Plant of the species Brassaia actinophylla substantially as herein shown and described characterized particularly as to novelty by the overall variegation of leaves, stems, and trunk from green to yellow and with stems of rosy marbled appearance, close noded position of stems and compact upright rapid growth, with leaves of leathery, thick form, vigorous growth with leaves continuing to hang on at lower portion of plant.
Read the full patent: US Plant Patent PP4187 in full — the complete specification, every figure, and the file history.