US 8633356

I'll search for information on this specific patent number, including any litigation or docket activity.

Let me run a couple more targeted checks for litigation/docket activity tied to this specific number.

US 8,633,356 B2 — Summary

Search coverage & confidence note: I ran targeted searches against Google Patents (full authoritative text provided), Justia, Patents-Review, and general web/docket sources for the literal number "8633356" and "8,633,356." I found no CAFC 2026 docket entry, no district court litigation, and no PTAB/IPR proceeding involving this patent. Absence of a hit is not proof of absence, so treat the "no litigation found" statement as "nothing surfaced in my searches," not as an affirmative negative. All bibliographic data below is drawn from the Google Patents record for US8633356B2, which I treat as authoritative.

Bibliographic data

Abstract (as issued)

"It is an objective to provide a method for controlling root parasitic plants. The present invention is directed to a method for protecting plants from root parasitic plants comprising regulating the activity of a protein associated with the strigolactone biosynthetic pathway (including the strigolactone biosynthetic and signalling pathway) in plants or expression of a gene encoding such a protein."

Claims — plain-language overview

The patent has 2 claims: one independent claim (claim 1) and one dependent claim (claim 2).

Claim 1 (independent) — "knock down CCD7 or CCD8 to starve the parasite's germination cue."
A method for protecting plants from root parasitic plants in which you decrease the activity (or the gene expression) of a CCD7 or CCD8 carotenoid cleavage dioxygenase in the plant. The decrease is accomplished by either:

• (a) introducing a mutation into the CCD7 or CCD8 gene in the plant, or
• (b) inhibiting translation of CCD7/CCD8 mRNA in the plant,
  with the end result that the plant synthesizes less strigolactone. (Claim 1 as printed contains the typographical error "mutataion.")

In practical terms: this claims a genetically modified or translation-blocked host plant whose strigolactone output is reduced, so that Striga/Orobanche seeds near its roots are not stimulated to germinate — the mechanism the specification demonstrates with the rice d10-1 (CCD8) mutant in FIG. 5.

Claim 2 (dependent) — the sequence scope of "CCD7 or CCD8 gene."
Narrows claim 1 to specific gene definitions:

• (a) genes of SEQ ID NOs: 1, 3, 5, and 7 (rice CCD7, Arabidopsis CCD7, rice CCD8, Arabidopsis CCD8, respectively);
• (b) variants of (a) having 1 or several nucleotide deletions/substitutions/additions and retaining carotenoid cleavage dioxygenase activity; and
• (c) genes hybridizing under stringent conditions to DNA complementary to (a) and encoding a protein with CCD activity.

Important scope observation

The specification is much broader than the claims. The description contemplates: lowering or raising activity of CCD7/CCD8, cytochrome P450 (CYP711A1/MAX1), and F-box LRR proteins (MAX2/RMS4/D3); "trap plant" embodiments; and the use of antagonists or neutralizing antibodies. The granted claims capture only the "decrease CCD7/CCD8" direction (mutation or translation inhibition) — they do not recite the trap-plant/up-regulation embodiments, the CYP711A1 embodiment, or the F-box protein embodiment. Any infringement or validity analysis should be run against the two issued claims only, not the specification's aspirational scope.

Related-art / citation context (not litigation)

• Citing document: CN110156883A (China Tobacco Zhengzhou Tobacco Research Institute, 2019) — NtDAD2 strigolactone signal transducer; listed as citing US 8,633,356.
• Co-pending disclosure in the literature cited on the face of the patent includes Gomez-Roldan et al., Nature 455:189–195 (2008) and Umehara et al., Nature 455:195–201 (2008) — contemporaneous strigolactone/shoot-branching papers.

If you need a definitive litigation check, the reliable next step is a USPTO PatentCenter / PACER / CourtListener docket query on the patent number directly, or the USPTO Patent Assignment and PTAB APIs — I can draft those query strings for you.

I'll run targeted searches on patent litigation databases for the literal number 8633356.

Let me run additional targeted checks on litigation-specific databases.

Litigation search — US Patent No. 8,633,356

Bottom line: No litigation is known involving US Patent No. 8,633,356. I found no district court case, no CAFC appeal, no PTAB/IPR/PGR proceeding, and no ITC investigation in which this patent is the asserted patent, the patent in suit, or the challenged patent.

What I searched and what came back

I ran targeted queries against litigation-oriented sources (Unified Patents–style coverage, PACER/CourtListener-derived results, docket aggregators) using the literal strings 8633356 and 8,633,356 in the present task (the query "8633356" OR "8,633,356" PATENT infringement docket hit the step limit before returning), plus checks on the patent owner (RIKEN):

• No docket entry, complaint, or judgment identified 8,633,356 or 8633356.
• RIKEN's portfolio litigation footprint appears to be in unrelated technologies (e.g., regenerative medicine / stem cell matters before the UPC, and piston-ring/abrasive oppositions at the EPO) — nothing touching this plant-science patent.
• The only post-grant activity surfacing for this family is citation activity, not adversarial: CN110156883A (China Tobacco Zhengzhou Tobacco Research Institute, 2019) cites US 8,633,356 as prior art. That is a citation, not a case.

Important caution on false positives (per your rule against similar numbers)

Several search hits concern different patents numbered "...356" and must not be attributed to US 8,633,356:

• U.S. Patent No. 8,148,356 — Cumberland Pharmaceuticals' Acetadote patent (D. Ill. litigation vs. Mylan).
• The "356 patent" in Presidio Components v. American Technical Ceramics (S.D. Cal., 3:14-cv-02061) — a capacitor patent, unrelated.
  These are unrelated patents with coincidentally similar numbers; I am flagging them only to explain why they appeared.

Summary table

Confidence and recommended verification

The absence of hits is not proof of absence — some dockets (pre-2010, settled, or sealed matters; foreign proceedings) are not reliably surfaced by open web search. To obtain a definitive negative, the reliable next steps are direct queries against:

1. USPTO PatentCenter / PTAB APIs for the patent number (to confirm no IPR/PGR/reexam),
2. PACER and CourtListener/RECAP dockets on the number,
3. Unified Patents litigation caselist and Docket Alarm filtered on 8633356.

Given the patent's subject matter (a method of making genetically modified plants with reduced CCD7/CCD8 activity, assigned to a Japanese research institute and expired for non-payment of maintenance fees effective 2022-01-21), the commercial incentive to litigate it was always low — which is consistent with the null result. If you'd like, I can draft the exact API/query strings for the PatentCenter, PTAB, and CourtListener checks.

I'll verify the structured "no proceedings on file" result against public sources before finalizing.

Let me run two more targeted checks to be thorough before concluding.

Proceedings overview

Zero AIA trial proceedings on file. US 8,633,356 B2 has never been the subject of an IPR, PGR, or CBM review at the Patent Trial and Appeal Board — 0 active, 0 claims canceled, 0 claims sustained, 0 settled, 0 institution denials. This is consistent with the "PTAB proceedings on file" block supplied in the prompt (USPTO Open Data Portal ingest returns no AIA trials), and it matches the litigation findings in the previously generated Patent summary section, which surfaced no district court or CAFC activity either. There is no contradiction between the two records; both are negative.

Bottom-line defensive posture for a defendant: this is not a "hardened patent" story and not a "dead claims" story — it is a moot patent story. US 8,633,356 expired for failure to pay maintenance fees, with the lapse recorded 2022-02-28 and an effective expiration date of 2022-01-21 (Google Patents legal events: "PATENT EXPIRED FOR FAILURE TO PAY MAINTENANCE FEES," 37 C.F.R. § 1.362). A demand letter asserting this patent today cannot threaten injunctive relief and cannot reach any post-2022-01-21 conduct. There is no PTAB record to lean on because the patent was never valuable enough to anyone to attack — it was a narrow, two-claim academic patent that lapsed on its owner's own non-payment.

Proceedings

There are no proceedings to list at the per-case level. Per the output schema, "most-impactful first" yields an empty set. Rather than invent a proceeding number — which the task constraints expressly forbid — the correct output is an explicit null result:

No proceedings — verification trail

• Type: N/A (no IPR / PGR / CBM ever filed)
• Filed: N/A
• Status: N/A. The structured source (USPTO ODP) reports no AIA trial proceedings. My supplementary web searches for the literal strings "8633356," "8,633,356," and RIKEN + strigolactone/parasitic-plant terms returned no PTAB petition, no institution decision, no Final Written Decision, and no Board docket entry for this patent.
• Judge panel: N/A
• Petition grounds: N/A
• Institution decision: N/A
• Final Written Decision: N/A — no FWD exists, so no claim of this patent has ever been adjudicated unpatentable or patentable by the Board.
• Settlement / termination: N/A
• Appeal: N/A — there is no FWD to appeal, hence no CAFC docket.
• Defensive value: Near-zero exposure independent of PTAB. The patent's own lapse date (effective 2022-01-21) predates today (2026-09-27) by more than four years; a defendant facing a letter citing it can point to the expressive terminal disclaimer-like effect of the fee lapse rather than needing any invalidity argument.

Confidence note: "No proceedings exist" is an assertion about a negative. I verified it against the authoritative structured ODP block plus targeted open-web searches, and I found nothing. Absence of a search hit is not proof, but for a patent that lapsed unasserted, the absence is well explained. A belt-and-suspenders confirmation would be a direct query to PTAB E2E and USPTO Patent Center on application 12/461,058 / patent 8,633,356, and a CourtListener docket search — I have not run those authenticated queries and cannot state their results.

Strategic summary

Which claims are canceled / sustained / untested. None are canceled, none are sustained, and — importantly — claims 1 and 2 have never been tested at the PTAB at all. The issued claim set remains exactly as granted on 2014-01-21: claim 1 (decreasing CCD7/CCD8 activity via mutation or translation inhibition) and claim 2 (the SEQ ID NO-dependent narrowing). The only "narrowing" this patent has experienced was self-inflicted at expiry, not via adverse Board or court adjudication. There is no surviving-claim list to report because all claims survive as written; they are simply unenforceable going forward by operation of the fee lapse.

Estoppel landscape. Section 315(e)(2) estoppel is entirely inapplicable — it attaches only to petitioners who have been through a final written decision, and no such decision exists. That means a current defendant has the full universe of prior-art grounds available, unconstrained by any IPR estoppel: § 102/§ 103 challenges over the same Gomez-Roldan et al. (2008) and Umehara et al. (2008) references cited on the face of the patent, § 112 written-description and enablement attacks on the genus-level claim language, and any art the examiner never considered. But practically, none of that is necessary. The prior-generated summary correctly flagged that the specification is far broader than the two issued claims; that gap (spec discloses trap plants, F-box proteins, CYP711A1, antagonists, neutralizing antibodies — claims capture only "decrease CCD7/CCD8") is a § 112 written-description vulnerability for claim 1's outer scope, but it is mooted by expiry.

Pattern signals. There are no pattern signals to read. No petitioner has ever filed against this patent, so there is no multiple-petition pattern, no serial petitioner, no RPI/privy chain. The patent owner (RIKEN, a Japanese national research institute) has never pursued a PTAB appeal of any Board decision on this patent — there is no decision to appeal. There is no defensive aggregator (Unified Patents or similar) in the chain; searching the patent's citation graph turns up only a single third-party citing document, CN110156883A (China Tobacco Zhengzhou Tobacco Research Institute, 2019, NtDAD2 strigolactone signal transducer), which is a citation, not a challenge.

Recommended next steps

• If you are a defendant and a demand letter or complaint cites US 8,633,356: the dispositive fact is the maintenance-fee lapse, not any PTAB outcome. The record shows the patent expired effective 2022-01-21 (expiry recorded 2022-02-28 for failure to pay maintenance fees under 37 C.F.R. § 1.362). Confirming the expiration against USPTO Patent Center for application 12/461,058 gives you a clean standing/accrual argument for any conduct after that date. Note the narrow caveat: damages for infringing acts before expiration may survive for the statutory lookback period if a suit were timely — but with no litigation history and a lapsed patent, that is a theoretical posture, not a practical one.
• If you need a definitive "no PTAB activity" negative: run the patent number directly against PTAB E2E, the USPTO Open Data Portal trials endpoint, and CourtListener for any In re RIKEN / RIKEN appellate docket. My searches found nothing, but I did not execute those authenticated queries.
• If active proceedings existed: they do not, so there are no trial-stage milestones (no § 316(a)(11) one-year FWD deadline, no oral hearing, no institution-decision date) to track. I am stating that plainly rather than manufacturing a docket.
• Signal to read into the absence: well-asserted patents do eventually attract IPRs, so the absence of any PTAB activity is itself informative — but here it is explained by the patent's commercial footnote status (a 2014 academic patent on strigolactone/Striga control, never litigated, allowed to lapse by RIKEN in 2022), not by any defensive-aggregator clearing effort. For a defendant today, the patent's defensive relevance is effectively nil on all fronts: expired, unasserted, and untested.

I'll verify the assignment record against the USPTO Assignment Center and cross-reference other sources.

Let me run a few more targeted checks on post-issuance transfers, litigation, and RIKEN's status.

Assignment Record Reconstruction — US 8,633,356 B2

Primary-source note: The USPTO Assignment Center (assignmentcenter.uspto.gov) and its legacy mirror (assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html) are JavaScript/API-driven; my web searches could not retrieve a rendered reel/frame result page for this patent number. I therefore reconstructed the chain from the Google Patents legal-events record for US 8,633,356 B2, which mirrors the USPTO assignment index, and cross-checked it against Justia, Patents-Review, and SEC/docket search results. I found no evidence of any post-issuance transfer. Where a field (e.g., correspondent) is not disclosed in the record, I say so rather than guess.

Inventors

Five named inventors, all research scientists at the Japanese national research institute RIKEN (Wako, Saitama) at the time of filing:

Unusual patterns: None of the classic fire-sale precursor patterns are present. The inventors did not depart the assignee before filing, and the assignment was executed by all inventors to RIKEN in the same window as filing (see timeline below). This is a standard institutional "assignment of employee inventions" chain, not a fragmented inventor-holding pattern. I found no evidence in the searched sources of inventors retaining personal undivided interests or subsequently forming an inventor-owned shell — the assignment of record lists the inventors only as assignors.

Original assignee

RIKEN — Japan's largest comprehensive research institution, formally the Institute of Physical and Chemical Research, a National Research and Development Agency funded principally by the Japanese government. Address of record: 2-1 Hirosawa, Wako-shi, Saitama 351-0198, Japan.

• Primary line of business: public/national scientific research (physical and chemical sciences, life sciences, plant science). Not a commercial products company.
• Did RIKEN ship a product embodying the claims? No. The invention is a method (decreasing CCD7/CCD8 activity to reduce strigolactone exudation and thereby suppress Striga/Orobanche germination). RIKEN is a research institute; it does not sell seed or crop-protection products. The claimed subject matter is the kind typically licensed to an ag-bio company or embodied via plant breeding. I found no evidence in the searched sources of a commercial product or a license to a named ag company tied specifically to this patent.
• Current status: Operating. RIKEN is an active, government-backed research organization (its patent portfolio continues to publish and grant routinely — e.g., Patents-Review shows RIKEN grants through 2025–2026). It is not acquired, dissolved, or in bankruptcy. Its ongoing activity is confirmed by the Justia/Patents-Review assignee profiles and the Belgian/Flemish patent registers showing live RIKEN filings.

Assignment timeline

The Google Patents legal-events record for US 8,633,356 B2 shows exactly one recorded assignment across the patent's life, and that assignment predates grant. There are no post-issuance conveyances.

• Executed 2009-06-08 to 2009-06-23 / recorded 2009-07-30 — Reel 023068 / Frame 0188
  • Conveyance: Assignment (ASSIGNMENT OF ASSIGNORS INTEREST)
  • Assignor: Yamaguchi, Shinjiro; Umehara, Mikihisa; Hanada, Atsushi; Yoshida, Satoko; Shirasu, Ken (all five inventors)
  • Assignee: RIKEN, Japan
  • Correspondent: Not disclosed in the available record. The Google Patents legal-events extract reproduces the assignment abstract (assignors, signing dates, reel/frame) but not the correspondent-of-record block. I could not retrieve a rendered USPTO Assignment Center page to capture the recording attorney/firm, and no other source surfaced it. This is a data gap, not a negative finding — I will not infer an NPE-linked correspondent here.
  • Context: Original assignment of employee inventions from the inventors to their institutional employer — a routine operating-institute capture, not a fire-sale, securitization, or transfer-to-asserter.

Subsequent events recorded (not assignments):

• 2013-12-31 — Patent grant recorded (issued 2014-01-21).
• 2016-12-03 / 2017-07-11 — Fee-payment procedures; year-4 maintenance fee paid (the only maintenance payment of record).
• 2021-09-13 — Maintenance-fee reminder mailed.
• 2022-02-28 — Lapse for failure to pay maintenance fees; patent recorded as expired for nonpayment, effective 2022-01-21.

If the Assignment Center were to show records beyond the one above, they did not surface in any source I searched. On the authoritative record before me, there is no second link in the chain. That absence is itself the finding: RIKEN is the only assignee of record from filing through expiration, and it never transferred the patent.

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 8633356
    2008 : Provisional filed by five RIKEN inventors
    2009 : Inventors assign rights to RIKEN
         : Assignment recorded reel 023068 frame 0188
    2014 : Patent issues to RIKEN
    2017 : Year 4 maintenance fee paid
    2022 : Patent expires for fee lapse

NPE / troll-pattern signals

For each signal: present / not present / unclear, with the record citation driving the call.

1. Shell-entity transfer — NOT PRESENT. There is no assignment to any "IP / Patents / Licensing / Holdings / Ventures" entity. The sole recorded conveyance (Reel 023068/0188, recorded 2009-07-30) runs from the inventors to an operating research institute, RIKEN. No single-purpose LLC or registered-agent address appears anywhere in the chain.

2. Known asserter in the chain — NOT PRESENT. Neither the assignor-inventors nor the assignee (RIKEN) matches any entity on the Acacia / Marathon / Intellectual Ventures / IPNav / Wi-LAN / Conversant / Vringo / Pendrell / Round Rock / Spangenberg or comparable high-frequency-plaintiff lists. RIKEN is a public research institute with no litigation-assertion profile for this patent.

3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — UNCLEAR (data gap). With only one recorded assignment, there is by definition no recurrence within this chain, so the signal cannot be assessed as present. The correspondent of record for Reel 023068/0188 was not obtainable from the sources available; I decline to name an attorney I cannot cite. A single appearance would not be a finding anyway — the signal requires recurrence.

4. Cascading transfers — NOT PRESENT. No consecutive tranche of assignments through chained LLCs. One assignment, recorded once, in 2009.

5. Pre-litigation transfer — NOT PRESENT. No infringement suit naming US 8,633,356 exists in any docket source I searched, so there is no pre-suit transfer window to evaluate. Targeted litigation searches on "8633356" / "8,633,356" returned only unrelated hits (an IEEE full-text list, an SEC accession number, financial-figure matches) — no case caption.

6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — NOT PRESENT. RIKEN never filed for bankruptcy protection and is an active National Research and Development Agency. No patent-sale-in-bankruptcy events (Kodak/Nortel/Polaroid-type) touch this patent.

7. Privateering — NOT PRESENT. No evidence of a transfer to an NPE asserting on RIKEN's behalf. No SEC filing, Patent Progress, or EFF coverage surfaced linking this patent to an assertion campaign.

8. Defensive aggregator (anti-NPE) — NOT PRESENT. The chain does not terminate at RPX, AST, LOT Network, Unified Patents, or OIN. Ownership simply remained with the original operating assignee until the patent lapsed. (Note: lapse for nonpayment is a neutralization outcome, but it is not the defensive-aggregator signal the rubric describes.)

Verdict

Insufficient data (only the original assignment).

Justification: The entire ownership history consists of a single recorded assignment — Reel 023068/0188, recorded 2009-07-30, executed 2009-06-08 to 2009-06-23 — conveying rights from the five named inventors to their employer, RIKEN, with no subsequent transfer of any kind on the record. RIKEN is a government-funded operating research institute (not a shell, not an NPE, not on any asserter list), it never asserted the patent, and the patent then expired for failure to pay maintenance fees effective 2022-01-21 (lapse recorded 2022-02-28). No shell-entity transfer, known asserter, cascading transfer, pre-litigation transfer, bankruptcy sale, privateering, or defensive-aggregator endpoint is present. The one unretrieved datum is the correspondent of record on the 2009 assignment, which I could not confirm from available sources and therefore did not characterize.

Verify at: USPTO Assignment Center — search patent number 8633356 → https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ (legacy: https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html). Supplemental cross-checks: Google Patents legal events for US8633356B2 and the RIKEN assignee profile on Patents-Review.

I'll search for the specific patent and its cited prior art references.

Let me verify the patent's cited references on Justia and the USPTO record, and check whether there are any patent citations (as opposed to the non-patent literature).

Let me directly verify whether US 8,633,356 has any patent citations (vs. only non-patent literature) and check the family/priority documents.

Prior-Art Analysis — US 8,633,356 B2 ("Method for controlling root parasitic plants")

Scope note. I ran the requested search against the USPTO record (via Google Patents' authoritative full text — https://patents.google.com/patent/US8633356/en — and the Justia/Patents‑Review mirrors of US 2010/0043101 A1). Per the operating rules I did not auto-correct the number: all analysis below is keyed to the literal number 8633356 / US 12/461,058. I did not substitute results for any "similar" number.

1. The headline finding: US 8,633,356 has NO patent citations

This is an important negative result for the task as posed. On the front page of US 8,633,356 B2 (as rendered in the authoritative Google Patents text provided):

• There is no "U.S. Patent Documents" section under "References Cited."
• There is no "Foreign Patent Documents" section.
• The only "References Cited" content is a "Non-Patent Citations (49)" list.
• The only "Cited By" entry is CN 110156883 A (China Tobacco Zhengzhou Tobacco Research Institute, 2019-08-23) — a forward citation (art that came later), which cannot be prior art to this 2008-priority patent.

So the answer to "look at each patent citation for 8633356" is: there are none. The prior art that matters here is entirely the 49 non-patent (journal/review) references listed by the examiner, plus the specification's own reference list. Any anticipation analysis must therefore run against the NPL.

Caveat: this reflects the record as provided (Google Patents). If a Paper/IDS shows patent references that Google's OCR/table extraction dropped, that would need a direct USPTO PatentCenter / Global Dossier check of the "References Cited" page. I flag this because you asked for a definitive USPTO result and I could not independently load the USPTO front page in this session.

2. Critical-date framework (pre-AIA §102 governs)

• Priority date: 2008-08-01 (US provisional 61/129,960)
• Filing date: 2009-07-30 → filed before 2013-03-16, so pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. §102 applies.
• One-year statutory bar date (§102(b)): 2008-07-30.

Consequence: Any reference published on/after 2008-08-01 cannot be §102(a) or §102(b) prior art. Two of the most thematically important references fall in that window (see §4), which materially narrows the real prior art.

Elements of the claims to be anticipated. For §102 anticipation, a single reference must disclose every element:

• Claim 1: (a) a method for protecting plants from root parasitic plants; (b) comprising decreasing the activity of a CCD7 or CCD8 carotenoid cleavage dioxygenase, or expression of a CCD7/CCD8 gene; (c) the decrease being achieved by introducing a mutation in the CCD7/CCD8 gene or by inhibiting translation of CCD7/CCD8 mRNA; (d) thereby decreasing the amount of strigolactone synthesized by the plants.
• Claim 2: claim 1 narrowed to genes of SEQ ID NOs 1, 3, 5, 7, 1-to-several-nucleotide variants retaining CCD activity, or stringent-hybridization equivalents.

3. Most relevant cited prior art (the ones an anticipation/§103 analysis turns on)

For each: full citation, date, what it discloses, and claim anticipation assessment.

Remaining NPL (methods/background, no anticipation possible). These are technical-support citations that cannot read on either claim: Murashige & Skoog, Physiol. Plant. 15:473–497 (1962); Kamachi et al., Plant Physiol. 96:411–417 (1991); Norén et al., Physiol. Plant. 121:343–348 (2004); Magome et al., Plant J. 37:720–729 (2004); Varbanova et al., Plant Cell 19:32–45 (2007); Mangnus et al., J. Agric. Food Chem. 40:1230–1235 (1992) (GR24 synthesis); Lechner et al., Curr. Opin. Plant Biol. 9:631–638 (2006) (F-box/SCF, off-claim); Turnbull et al., Plant J. 32:255–262 (2002) (micrografting); Gressel et al., Crop Prot. 23:661–689 (2004) and Joel, Crop Prot. 19:753–758 (2000) (parasitic-weed control reviews); Bradow et al., J. Plant Growth Regul. 7:227–239 (1988) & 9:35–41 (1990) (synthetic strigol analogs/non-parasitic germination).

4. Two references that are commonly (mis)treated as prior art — but are NOT

The two papers most often assumed to be the "closest prior art" for this patent are on the face of the patent but post-date the priority date:

• Umehara, M. et al., "Inhibition of shoot branching by new terpenoid plant hormones," Nature 455:195–201 (as cited; actual 195–200) — published 2008-09-11.
• Gomez-Roldan, V. et al., "Strigolactone inhibition of shoot branching," Nature 455:189–195 (as cited; actual 189–194) — published 2008-09-11.

Both issued ~6 weeks after the 2008-08-01 priority date and within the one-year grace window before the 2009-07-30 filing. Under pre-AIA §102(a)/(b) they are not prior art to US 8,633,356 (they are neither "before the invention" nor "more than one year prior" to filing). Notably, Umehara et al. shares the same inventors as the patent — it is the inventors' own contemporaneous disclosure of the same d-mutant/CCD8 work, not third-party art. Citing them as anticipatory would be an error; they belong in the §103 "state of the art / common ownership" discussion at most.

If you were instead analyzing this under AIA §102(a)(1) (not applicable here given the 2009 filing), the analysis would flip, because AIA §102(a)(1) reaches any public disclosure before the effective filing date. This is the single most date-sensitive point in the whole file.

5. Bottom line on anticipation

• Claim 1 — not anticipated by any cited reference. The combination of (i) a plant-protection-from-root-parasites purpose, (ii) decreasing CCD7/CCD8 activity/expression, (iii) by mutation or mRNA-translation inhibition, and (iv) thereby reducing synthesized strigolactone is not disclosed, in a single reference, by any of the 49 NPL items. The closest single document, Matusova et al. 2005, links the carotenoid pathway to Striga/Orobanche germination but never names CCD7/CCD8 or recites a mutation/knockdown-based protection method.
• Claim 2 — not anticipated. The sequence-scope limitation (SEQ ID NOs 1, 3, 5, 7 and their variants/hybridizing equivalents) is enabled by the CCD gene-cloning papers (Booker 2004; Sorefan 2003; Arite 2007; Zou 2006), but none of them discloses claim 1's method, so none can anticipate the dependent claim either.
• The real §103 conversation would be: Matusova 2005 (parasite germination ← carotenoid pathway) + Booker 2004 / Sorefan 2003 / Schwartz 2004 (CCD7/CCD8 make the carotenoid-derived branch signal) + Gurney 2006 (rice/Striga resistance assay), with the 2008 Nature papers excluded as non-prior-art. Whether that combination renders claim 1 obvious is where a validity fight would actually live — not at §102.
• No patent-citation prior art exists on the face of US 8,633,356; the only patent document in the record (CN 110156883 A, 2019) is a later forward citation, not prior art. The later "Families citing" items (GB 201005315 D0 / Micromass, 2010; CN 119286909 B / rice D3 protein, 2024) are likewise post-dated and irrelevant to validity.

6. Recommended verification steps (to make this definitive)

1. USPTO PatentCenter → application 12/461,058 → "References Cited" tab, to confirm the front page truly has zero U.S./foreign patent citations and to capture any IDS-only references.
2. Global Dossier / Google Patents "Patent citations" panel rendered directly (my session could not load a Patent Citations section — consistent with there being none).
3. Exact publication dates for the borderline 2008 NPL items (Goldwasser 2008; Yoneyama New Phytol. 179; López-Ráez New Phytol. 178; Sugimoto & Ueyama Phytochemistry 69) against the 2008-07-30 statutory-bar date.
4. If you intend a real rejection or invalidity position, screen the pre-2008 CCD patent literature (e.g., MAX/CCD8-era applications) — but on this record, none is present among the patent's own citations.

Confidence: High on the bibliographic and claim-scope findings and on the "no patent citations" negative (given the authoritative Google Patents text). Medium on the exact 2008 publication dates of the borderline NPL items, and I could not independently load the USPTO front page in this session — treat the zero-patent-citation finding as "per the provided record," pending the PatentCenter check above.

I'll verify a few key dates and reference details before building the obviousness analysis.

Obviousness Analysis — US 8,633,356 B2 under 35 U.S.C. § 103

Scope note / cross-reference to earlier sections. This section builds on the two prior sections (bibliographic summary and litigation summary). I do not repeat the claim text or the "no litigation found" result. One flag before starting: the Google Patents "Non-Patent Citations (49)" block on this page omits a highly material prior-art patent document that my search surfaced — WO 2006/098626 A3 (Plant Research International B.V. / Rothamsted Research Ltd., published 21 Sept. 2006). Because it post-dates no relevant event and is squarely on point, it must be part of any § 103 analysis even though it is not in the page's citation list. (It is not a contradiction of the earlier sections — those correctly reported only the citations that appear on the page.)

1. Governing law and critical date

The application was filed 30 July 2009, claiming priority to US provisional 61/129,960 filed 1 Aug. 2008. Because the effective filing date precedes 16 March 2013, the pre-AIA versions of §§ 102/103 govern. The critical date for § 102(b) art is therefore 1 Aug. 2007 (one year before priority); § 102(a) art is anything published before the invention date (constructively 1 Aug. 2008).

Obviousness is assessed from the perspective of a person of ordinary skill in the art (POSITA) — here a plant molecular biologist / plant geneticist with experience in carotenoid/apocarotenoid biochemistry and parasitic-weed biology. Scope and content of the prior art, differences between the prior art and the claims, and the level of ordinary skill are the Graham factors; the fourth (KSR) factor — objective indicia — is addressed in § 8.

A threshold observation that materially shapes the analysis: the specification itself is an important source of admissions. It states:

"current lines of evidence suggest that strigolactone biosynthesis involves a (epoxy)carotenoid cleavage enzyme conserved across diverse plant species. Although CCD7 and CCD8 encoded by the MAX/RMS/DAD/D loci fulfill these criteria, their role in strigolactone biosynthesis had not been examined."

That sentence concedes that, on the art as it stood, CCD7/CCD8 met the criteria for the strigolactone-biosynthesis enzyme, and that the only remaining question was whether that was true. Under KSR Int'l Co. v. Teleflex Inc., 550 U.S. 398 (2007), a claim is obvious where the art provides a recognized problem and a finite number of identified, predictable solutions, and the applicant pursues one of them with a reasonable expectation of success.

2. Deconstruction of the claims

Claim 1 — a method for protecting plants from root parasitic plants, comprising:

Claim 2 — narrows "the gene" to (a) SEQ ID NOs 1, 3, 5, 7 (rice CCD7; Arabidopsis CCD7; rice CCD8; Arabidopsis CCD8); (b) variants with 1–several nucleotide deletions/substitutions/additions retaining CCD activity; (c) stringent-hybridization equivalents.

The true inventive weight therefore sits on one binary question: was it obvious that knocking down CCD7 or CCD8 reduces strigolactone output and thus protects a host from root parasites? Element 1.2's two mechanisms and claim 2's sequence scope are, as shown below, routine implementation details.

3. Prior art on the record and its teaching

The references below are drawn from the page's Non-Patent Citations (49) and the search-confirmed WO publication.

References that are NOT prior art (flag). Two references cited on the face of the patent post-date the 1 Aug. 2008 priority date:

• Gomez-Roldan et al., Nature 455(7210):189–194 — published 11 Sept. 2008 (online 6 Aug. 2008) — https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18690209/
• Umehara et al., Nature 455(7210):195–200 — published 11 Sept. 2008 — https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18690207/

Both appeared after 1 Aug. 2008, so on the present record they cannot be § 102(a) art against the applicant's constructive reduction to practice, and they are not § 102(b) art (less than one year before the 30 July 2009 filing). This is a double-edged point: (i) the examiner's citations of these two papers cannot supply the missing "CCD8-mutant-is-strigolactone-deficient" link; but (ii) the patent's own priority is therefore razor-thin — the same finding was independently published by two groups within days. It also reinforces that the linkage was the natural next experiment rather than an unpredictable leap. (Similar-document entries Guan 2012, Liu 2013, Zhang 2010, and the 2018 sorghum paper are all post-filing and irrelevant to § 103.)

4. Ground 1 — Claim 1 obvious over PA-1 (WO 2006/098626) in view of PA-3/PA-4 (Booker 2004; Schwartz 2004)

This is the cleanest, most defensible combination, and PA-1 is the closest prior art that the page's citation list does not disclose.

1. PA-1 supplies the problem, the goal, and the mechanism. WO 2006/098626 expressly teaches (a) strigolactones are carotenoid-derived, (b) crops can be engineered so they "do not induce germination of parasitic plant seeds anymore and therefore are resistant to parasitic plants," and (c) "strigolactone overproducing trap and catch crops." That is the preamble and the intended result of claim 1, and it reaches even the trap-plant embodiment described in the specification (which the granted claims, per the earlier section, do not capture).

2. PA-1 also supplies the operative route — interference with the carotenoid/apocarotenoid biosynthetic machinery. Its searched claim set covers "a composition comprising at least one carotenoid or apocarotenoid biosynthesis inhibitor" (fluridone, norflurazone, isoxaflutole, clomazone, etc.). A POSITA reading PA-1 is thus directed to reduce carotenoid-pathway flux or its cleavage products in the host as the way to suppress strigolactone exudation.

3. PA-3 and PA-4 identify the specific enzymes. Booker 2004 (PA-3) shows MAX3/CCD7 is a carotenoid cleavage dioxygenase that produces a carotenoid-derived signal; Schwartz 2004 (PA-4) shows CCD7 and CCD8 sequentially cleave β-carotene and that max3/max4 lesions sit in CCD7/CCD8. A POSITA seeking to implement PA-1's low-germination-stimulant crop would immediately look to the only known plant carotenoid cleavage dioxygenases (PA-7's finite CCD1/4/7/8 set) — and CCD7/CCD8 are the two with demonstrated carotenoid-cleavage activity and a known loss-of-function phenotype.

4. Motivation, as a matter of law. The motivation is expressly stated in the prior art itself (PA-1's stated goal of parasite-resistant crops and trap crops) and reinforced by the specification's own admission that CCD7/CCD8 "fulfill these criteria" for the strigolactone-biosynthesis enzyme. Where "the problem is known and the solution is one of a finite number of identified, predictable solutions," the claim is obvious. KSR, 550 U.S. at 421.

5. Reasonable expectation of success. Matusova (PA-2) had already shown that disrupting carotenoid biosynthesis (maize carotenoid mutants; fluridone/other isoprenoid inhibitors) reduces Striga germination stimulation. Reducing a carotenoid cleavage dioxygenase that acts on the pathway to the stimulant is a conservative, mechanistically parallel step with a strong expectation of the same directional result.

Conclusion on Ground 1: Claim 1 would likely be held prima facie obvious.

5. Ground 2 — Claim 1 obvious over PA-2 (Matusova 2005) + PA-3/PA-4/PA-5 (CCD7/CCD8 as carotenoid cleavage dioxygenases) + PA-13/PA-1 (parasite-control motivation)

This is the "classic" three-reference combination, independent of the WO publication:

• PA-2 links Striga/Orobanche germination stimulants to the carotenoid pathway, and even "hypothesize[s] how the germination stimulants are formed" (i.e., through carotenoid cleavage).
• PA-3/PA-4/PA-5 establish that CCD7 and CCD8 are the carotenoid cleavage dioxygenases in the MAX/RMS/DAD pathway, operating consecutively on β-carotene.
• PA-13 (Bouwmeester 2003) frames germinated-stimulant reduction as parasitic-weed control and points to Arabidopsis/maize mutants as the tool; PA-1 supplies the express "make a low-stimulant, resistant crop" motivation.

The specification's own "fulfill these criteria" sentence bridges the two bodies of art: it concedes that a POSITA would identify CCD7/CCD8 as candidate strigolactone-biosynthesis enzymes. That admission alone supplies the required "articulated reasoning with rational underpinning" to combine.

6. Ground 3 — The species-specific and "introducing a mutation / inhibiting translation" limitations (claims 1 element 1.2; claim 2)

"Introducing a mutation into the CCD7 or CCD8 gene." PA-8 (Arite 2007) and PA-9 (Zou 2006) already describe naturally occurring loss-of-function alleles in exactly these rice genes (d10 = CCD8; htd1/d17 = CCD7), and PA-10 (Ishikawa 2005) catalogues the corresponding d mutants. Under KSR, "a patent composed of several elements is not proved obvious merely by demonstrating that each of its elements was, independently, known in the prior art," but where the element is known to be useful for the same purpose and used as the inventor used it, the claim is obvious. Introducing a mutation into a known gene to abolish its known activity is the paradigm of routine knock-out/TILLING/EMS methodology and warrants no patentable weight. Indeed, the patent's own dopant d10-1 is described as "a single amino acid substitution" — i.e., an available allele.

"Inhibiting translation of mRNA." Antisense/RNAi knockdown was, by 2008, a thoroughly routine and well-documented tool in plant molecular biology for suppressing a targeted mRNA (the patent itself lists antisense as merely "an example"). Choosing antisense to silence CCD7/CCD8 after deciding to reduce CCD7/CCD8 activity is a predictable, known-technique-for-a-known-purpose step. The WO 2006/098626 ISA search report further demonstrates that carotenoid-cleavage-gene manipulation was a recognized field (e.g., WO 99/55888, WO 01/88169), reinforcing that the silencing techniques were conventional.

Claim 2 — the sequences. Claim 2 (a) recites SEQ ID NOs 1, 3, 5, 7. Those are the rice CCD7, Arabidopsis CCD7, rice CCD8, and Arabidopsis CCD8 nucleotide sequences — precisely the sequences already disclosed/characterized by PA-3 (MAX3/CCD7), PA-5 (MAX4/CCD8), PA-8 (D10/CCD8), and PA-9 (D17/CCD7). Reciting a known gene's sequence adds nothing patentable. Claim 2 (b)–(c) (1–several nt variants; stringent-hybridization equivalents) is textbook routine optimization / In re Kubin / KSR territory: once the genus of CCD7/CCD8 genes and their function are known, generating and screening minor variants and homologs by defined hybridization stringency is "a finite number of identified, predictable" alternatives with a reasonable expectation of retained activity — and the specification itself recites the wholly conventional hybridization conditions (5×SSC, Denhardt's, 45–65 °C) with no data showing any variant is critical. Claim 2 is obvious for the same reasons as claim 1.

7. What the prior art did not disclose, and the counter-argument on novelty-of-linkage

The strongest non-obviousness argument is that, before the inventors' work, no reference actually demonstrated that CCD7/CCD8 mutants produce less strigolactone. Booker 2004 and Sorefan 2003 spoke of an "unidentified" / "novel plant signaling molecule," not a strigolactone; Matusova 2005 showed carotenoid origin but did not name CCD7/CCD8; and the WO 2006/098626 publication, on its face, appears to target carotenoid-biosynthesis inhibitors and mycorrhizal/selection strategies rather than CCD7/CCD8 gene knock-down specifically.

That gap, however, cuts against patentability under KSR, not for it:

• The linkage question was the explicitly flagged next experiment — the specification admits CCD7/CCD8 "fulfill these criteria" and that "their role in strigolactone biosynthesis had not been examined." A suggestion to try a known compound/method, where the art provides a reason to expect it will work, defeats patentability.
• The chemical reasoning is direct, not speculative: if the stimulant is carotenoid-derived (PA-2), and CCD7/CCD8 are the only carotenoid-cleavage dioxygenases acting on β-carotene (PA-4), then reducing CCD7/CCD8 activity should reduce the stimulant. That is a structural/mechanistic nexus of the sort KSR credits.
• Two independent groups reached the same linkage within days of the priority date (the non-prior-art Nature papers). Simultaneous independent invention is classically probative that the result was obvious — "obviousness does not require absolute predictability" (KSR, quoting In re O'Farrell).

A secondary argument — that knocking out CCD7/CCD8 has the undesirable side effect of a bushy/dwarf phenotype (PA-8's "enhanced branching," the patent's own d10 dwarfism) — could be pressed as a species of "teaching away." It is weak: PA-1/PA-13 already taught that low-stimulant crops were worth pursuing despite any architectural trade-off, and the patent's own data show the d10-1 branching and height phenotype "were complemented by including 2 μM GR24," showing the trait can be managed. Moreover, a "teaching away" argument requires the art to criticize, discredit, or discourage the claimed route — no cited reference does.

8. Objective indicia (Graham factor 4)

• Long-felt need / failure of others: Striga/Orobanche control had been an acknowledged "intractable" problem for decades (PA-13; the patent's own background). This could support non-obviousness if the art had tried and failed to knock down CCD7/CCD8 — but the art had simply not yet focused on those genes for parasite control, and the WO 2006/098626 publication had already generalized the carotenoid-pathway approach. A "need" satisfies a known goal that the art had already identified.
• Unexpected results: The claimed benefit (fewer infections) is the expected consequence of the admitted mechanism (less exuded stimulant). To be probative, a patentee would need evidence that reducing CCD7/CCD8 unexpectedly suppressed germination without unacceptable agronomic penalty. The record shows the opposite — the mutants are dwarfed, and some residual germination/infection persisted near d10-1 roots. There is no comparative showing against the closest prior art (PA-1).
• Skepticism / teaching away: none identified.
• Commercial success / licensing: none on the record; the patent lapsed for non-payment of maintenance fees effective 21 Jan. 2022 (per the earlier sections), which is evidence that no nexus-bearing commercial success exists.

Net: the objective indicia are neutral to unfavourable for the patentee.

9. Bottom line

Confidence and caveats. This is an analyst's opinion, not a legal conclusion. The two most important decisive documents — WO 2006/098626 A3 (which I retrieved via search, and which is missing from the page's citation list) and the specification's own "fulfill these criteria" admission — are the strongest supports for obviousness; a full invalidity opinion should verify WO 2006/098626's US national-stage status, claims, and specification (including whether it names any CCD7/CCD8 gene or any other carotenoid cleavage dioxygenase by sequence) and obtain the file wrapper to see on what basis the examiner allowed the claims over the cited art. Finally, the near-simultaneous non-prior-art Nature papers (Gomez-Roldan 2008; Umehara 2008, both published 11 Sept. 2008) cannot be used as § 102/103 art against the 1 Aug. 2008 priority, but they are strong corroborating evidence that the CCD7/CCD8→strigolactone link was obvious to the field at the time.

Recommended next-step queries to close evidentiary gaps:

1. WO 2006/098626 A3 national-phase / family documents (US 11/908,849 or equivalent) — http://patentscope.wipo.int and Google Patents family view.
2. USPTO PAIR/file-wrapper for 12/461,058 — the examiner's cited art and reasons for allowance.
3. PACER/CourtListener/Unified Patents on 8633356 (per the earlier litigation section, nothing surfaced, but confirm as a definitive negative).