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Jurisprudence in the area of defining patent scope is opaque and inconsistent. District courts and litigants cannot be certain of the bounds of the exclusive territory covered by a patent--defined by the patent's claims--until the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit-the single patent appellate court in the nation-says what it is in an appeal after final judgment. The appellate court appears to simply redo the analysis of the district courts, yet often inexplicably reaches a different conclusion based on the patent's text. Though much has been written about the Federal Circuit's unpredictable, textual approach to claim construction, no scholarship has focused on the fact that the problem may stem from the court's inconsistent treatment of ex post information in the analysis--information that was uncovered after patent issuance. Because the Federal Circuit generally presents claim scope as immutably set ex ante at patent grant, it only erratically acknowledges the relevance of ex post information in the claim construction inquiry. This Article proposes a more functional, holistic approach to claim construction that forces the courts to expressly acknowledge the relevance of ex post information in every case. A court reassessing the scope of a patent would ask: If a decision-maker had known everything ex ante that has since been discovered ex post in the course of the litigation, would they have still granted the patent as written? The proposal is based on the under appreciated reality that claims are meant to be temporally flexible in order to incentivize innovation. And although the Federal Circuit does not explicitly admit to this, its opinions indicate that claim construction is not a stand-alone, objective analysis based only on facts and arguments made before patent grant. Therefore, the proposal simply attempts to make express what is already being done implicitly on the appellate level--it encourages courts to look at the determination of patent scope during claim construction in a more integrated way to consider how the scope relates to the other issues in the case. Using this approach, courts automatically help align their reasoning in claim construction with patent law's purpose of promoting innovation. The transparency and principled reasoning resulting from the Federal Circuit implementing such a proposal would help develop a more orderly common-law doctrine of claim construction, providing much-needed guidance to district courts and patent litigants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the possible adverse effects of the practice by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office (USPTO) to publish unexamined patent applications as mandated by the American Inventors Protection Act (AIPA) and proposes strategies to balance the benefits of early publication with the costs of patent system uncertainty. Also cited are AIPA's aim to promote innovation, and how passing the public notice costs to applicants could boost the quality of applications.

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Co-infection of bean yellow mosaic virus (BYMV) and cucumber mosaic virus (CMV) was confirmed in gladioli var. Lehenda Kyieva, Pamyat', Victoria Skvyrska by TEM, DAS-ELISA, and RT-PCR. The symptoms of co-infection were chlorotic streaks and mosaics on the leaves, flower colour breaking. The infectious nature of the symptoms was proven by biotesting method (Koch's postulates). Partial CP gene sequences of three gladiolus BYMV isolates BYMV-Gl-LeK-19 (MZ286969), GlMP-18 (MK416160), BYMV-Gl-Skv-20 (MZ286967) and three CMV isolates CMV-Gl-LeK-19 (MW847707), CMV-Gl-MP-19 (MW847708), CMV-Gl-Skv-20 (MW847710) were deposited to the NCBI GenBank. BYMV isolates are clustered with Monocot group, having identity with the isolates from this group of 94.8–99.4% nt and 95.3–100% aa. CMV isolates belong to subgroup IA and share with them identity of 81.2–99.3% nt and 82.5–97.6% aa. Analysis revealed high level of CP nucleotide sequence diversity for BYMV-Gl-LeK-19, BYMV-Gl-Skv-20 and CMV-Gl-Skv-20 as some identified substitutions were nonsynonymous. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the last five years, the Supreme Court has had a frenzied approach to judicial review of agency action, with two wings of the Court pulling it in opposite directions. The ideological divide of the Court on deference to agency action was on stark display in three recent cases dealing with the Patent and Trademark Office's (PTO's) new proceeding for reevaluating issued patents (inter partes review (IPR)). Specifically, in three vacillating opinions, the Court expanded, contracted, and then again expanded the scope of whether and to what extent a decision by the PTO Director to institute this new proceeding can be reviewed by the Judiciary. Aside from the problem of having inconsistent holdings in this "institution trio" of cases, the framework developed thereby was also artificial, easily manipulated, and unmoored from reality. The Court got everything completely backwards in its reasoning--depriving the agency of discretion in allocating its own resources or relying on its superior expertise when the agency refused to institute an IPR proceeding (i.e., an institution denial), while tying the hands of the Judiciary in deciding questions of an agency's authority to act when the agency chose to grant review. This Article argues that the Court should have instead decided the question of reviewability by focusing on the pragmatic approach proposed in Heckler v. Chaney, respecting the traditional administrative law divide between agency action and inaction. The Court should have considered, as it did in Heckler, congressional intent, comparative institutional competence of the agency versus the courts, and the separation of powers paradigm in deciding to review agency action and inaction. The more sensible answer is that the courts should only be prohibited from reviewing agency inaction (i.e., denial of IPR institution). This approach allows the PTO to best use its expertise and knowledge of its resources to decide whether and to what extent to deny institution of an IPR, while allowing the courts to review the PTO's adherence to statutory requirements if the PTO does decide to institute an IPR. The approach also presents a variety of pragmatic benefits, such as eliminating the institution trio's line-drawing issues, reducing current agency incentives for developing shortcuts in denying institution, and providing a better balance of institutional burdens. This Article introduces an intriguing proposition that a more functional approach to agency action may, in other contexts, provide a potential compromise that satisfies both sides of the ideological divide in the Court. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

PVY strains differ in their geographic distribution, pathogenicity, control strategies and the economic loss to solanaceous production. Last years, recombinant PVY strains are expanding in potato producing areas. One of the reasons is the difficult diagnostics of recombinant PVY strains. The aim of the study is to determinate the phylogenetic group (genotype) of new Ukrainian tomato isolate of potato virus Y inducing abaxial leafrolling symptoms. For the first time, the phylogenetic analysis of PVY tomato isolate ToUMP-18 (Accession No MN092711) was conducted in Ukraine. It was revealed that ToUMP-18 has the highest percentage of the 342 CP gene fragment sequence identity (98.5% nt and 98.1% aa) with European, Brazilian, Egyptian and Chinese potato isolates; with tomato isolates from Poland 08-rol, PS5, PC3, Prz1, PS4 and SL16 from Slovakia and belongs to the PVYN-Wi strain group. The Ukrainian tomato PVY isolate ToUMP-18 has 2 aa substitutions in the studied region of the CP gene in comparison with other PVY isolates that testifies about its higher divergence. This is the first report about recombinant PVYN-Wi isolate occurrence on territory of Ukraine. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Regardless of its quantity and quality, soil organic matter can have significant effects on soil and plant nutrient content. There are only a few studies focusing on soil properties and viral disease incidence which investigate the contribution of soil or tissue nutrient contents to disease-suppressive effects. But none of them refers to purple coneflower viruses and nutritional elements of this crop. The aim of our study was investigation of infecting of purple coneflower with viruses under conditions of organic farming. An effective use of organic farming element in medicinal plants cultivation on the example of infection of purple coneflower of 1st and 2d year of vegetation with viruses is revealed. The research results showed that the economically important purple coneflower viruses in Bulgaria are AMV, CMV, TSWV, TMV and PVY. In Ukraine, it was found that the purple coneflower plants are infected with TSWV – in 2012, PVY – in 2013, and TRV – in 2014. The most harmful is CMV, which circulated on the Echinacea purpurea plants for 8 years. One of the most widespread viruses on the purple coneflower culture in both Ukraine and Bulgaria is CMV. Some properties of isolates of this virus were investigated. Significant yield reducing of coneflower under viral infection is shown. The absence of viral diseases and an increase in the productivity of coneflower plants grown under organic farming conditions as compared to control plants was demonstrated. The necessity of optimal supply of plants with nutrients is shown especially when the soil humus content is no less than 5.2%. This is the first report about the reduction of the infection of Echinacea purpurea plants with viruses under conditions of organic farming. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

WSMV and BYDV are the most harmful and widespread viruses of cereals in all wheat growing areas in the world. Many foreign scientific reports are devoted to the study of the climate change impact on plants, pathogens and their vectors. But only few of them are about cereal viruses. Recently, data about seed transmission of WSMV is appeared. The aim of the study was to research the variability of economically important wheat viruses (WSMV and BYDV) in several regions of Ukraine under change of weather conditions; and to investigate the ability of Ukrainian WSMV isolates to seed transmission. Long-term monitoring of wheat fi elds has shown that the most widespread and economically important in the Poltava, Kharkiv and Kyiv regions are WSMV and BYDVPAV. In 2011-2017 it was revealed that BYDV and WSMV are replacing each other from year to year, and cases of co-infection of these viruses are not recorded. In 2011, 2013 and 2015 WSMV incidence was 42.4%, 35%, 7%. In contrast, BYDV was detected in 1.2%, 1.5% and 0.9%, respectively. In 2012 and 2014 the frequency of BYDV detection was higher than WSMV (40-41% and 1-13.6%, respectively). An analysis of dependence of viruses' circulation in the agrocenoses on weather conditions change is carried out. It has been established that the periodic variability of viruses (WSMV or BYDV) is closely related to agroclimatic changes (air temperature, rainfall, temperature at soil surface, soil temperature on tillering node depth of winter crops and perennial grasses, and soil freezing depth in winter) that affect their host plants, vectors throughout the year and plants reservoirs in the winter, and also cause symptoms similar to viral infection. Decrease of viral infection of wheat and obtaining more stable gross harvest of grain and yield in recent years is substantiated. This is due to the creation of new wheat cultivars, adapted to negative biotic/abiotic factors and modifying the sowing dates to later ones. It has been experimentally proved that the Poltava isolate of WSMV is not seed-transmitted. Even if contamination of seeds with WSMV is possible, the frequency of such cases is insignificant and, as we think, does not play an important role in the epidemiology of this wheat virus in Ukraine. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A large gap in our Tax Code allows certain religious organizations to amass extraordinary riches while preying on the faithful. Their conduct is causing damage to the church as an institution and is inconsistent with the purpose of tax exemptions--to provide a public good. This Essay proposes that the IRS create a narrower, more specific definition of what constitutes a "church" for tax purposes. This change would force more religious entities to file annual returns with the IRS, and would better define the IRS threshold for auditing such organizations. Consistent, systematic enforcement of this definition may lead to increased disclosure to the IRS by both religious entities and third parties, and would provide a general boost to public confidence in the tax system and trust in legitimate churches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]