Citations tab: on the right panel of the hitlist: 
The Citations tab contains all the citations for a patent family or a patent/patent application:

  • Cited patents
  • Citing patents
  • Cited literature 
  • Standards citing the family/patent


NB: if the Citations tab is not displayed, select it via the "+" button on the right panel on the far right side at the top:



  • The Citations tab displays a summary section where you can see at a glance:
    • Total number of cited and citing patents/patent families, including the number of citations with USPTO rejection details, these are hyperlinked (as applicable) 
    • Whether this family has cited Non-Patent Literature (NPL)
    • Whether this family has been cited in standards (Standard Essential Patents – SEPs)


Click on any of the hyperlinks to jump into the appropriate section:



Cited and citing patents/patent families
The Citations tab displays for each cited/citing patent/patent family: 

  • Publication Number
  • First Application Date 
  • Patent Assignee
  • Citation origin
  • Category code (when applicable)
  • Title


For US patents and applications it also provides a link to the USPTO communication regarding the examiner rejection codes (102, 103, DBL, 101) via the "Details" hyperlink placed under the category code. Clicking on this hyperlink will open a small window with a link to the PDF.



Hitlist
From the hitlist, you can search cited or citing patents or both for the selected patents from your result set (max 80,000):




Cited: Patents backward cited by at least one member of the selected family
Citing: Patents forward citing at least one member of the selected family


The "Advanced citation search" adds the option of choosing more specific citation categories including:

  • Self or non-self citations
  • Citation origin (examiner, applicant or 3rd party)
  • Citation category related to novelty or obviousness (categories X, Y, I, 102, 103).





Category codes

EPO Examiner citation categories:

  • X : Particularly relevant if taken alone (lack of novelty or lack of inventive step)
  • Y : Particularly relevant if combined with another document in the same family (non-obviousness)
  • A : Technological background (no objection of lack of novelty or inventive step)
  • O : non-written (e.g. oral) disclosure
  • P : Intermediate document (published after priority date but before filing date of the application; used in combination with X, Y, A (e.g. XP)
  • T : Theory or principle underlying the invention
  • E : Earlier patent document, but published on, or after, the filing date
  • D : Document cited in the application
  • L : Document cited for other reasons
  • Other : No relevancy code


USPTO Examiner citation categories

  • 102 : Non-novel subject matter
  • 103 : Obvious subject matter
  • DBL: Double patenting, claim is anticipated or obvious in view of another claim in a separate patent filed by the same applicant
  • 101 : "subject matter eligibility" or "Alice" rejection, claims relate to a type of invention that is ineligible for patent protection

    > To know more, see article     Explore results of your Citation search