US Plant Patent PP4132
Walnut tree
PUBLIC DOMAIN
Patent expired October 25, 1994. This plant is in the public domain — anyone may propagate and sell it.
Twenty years from the filing date would end on January 4, 1997, but this patent ends 802 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
- PP4132
- Filed
- January 4, 1977
- Granted
- October 25, 1977
- Expires
- October 25, 1994
- Assignee
- GENN FERN F, GENN OLAN R
- Inventor
- GENN OLAN R
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 cold-resistant, English walnut tree which is of medium size, vigorous, spreading, densely foliated with large, early season, elliptic leaves, very early and abundant in flowering, and a regular, very early bearer, with medium productivity, of small, round, uniform, thin and soft-shelled, well-sealed, well-fitted nuts having relatively large, plump kernels, the nuts--which drop off early--having hulls which often split so that the nuts drop free.
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 English walnut tree, substantially as illustrated and described, which is of medium size, vigorous, spreading densely foliated with large, early season, elliptic leaves, very early and abundant in flowering, and a regular, very early bearer, with medium productivity, of small, round, uniform, thin and soft-shelled, well-sealed, well-filled nuts having relatively large, plump kernels, the nuts--which drop off early--having hulls which often split so that the nuts drop free; the tree being especially characterized by its resistance to extreme cold without serious damage.
Read the full patent: US Plant Patent PP4132 in full — the complete specification, every figure, and the file history.