Patent Citations

Non-patent citations (e.g. to journals) are not included. Patent citations can be added by the applicant or the examiner in the office (the latter suggesting it is relevant but the inventor may not have been aware of it).

A typical USPTO patent has significantly more outgoing citations than a typical EPO/PCT patent, and depending on the research topic under study, one may need to carefully consider the impact of this difference between US and European offices when looking at citation statistics. 4 columns, 42.5M lines, "|" delimited; the columns are:--citing: the patent on which the citation is found--cited: the patent that is cited.--cite\_origin: whether the citation was supplied by the applicant (labeled "a") or examiner (labeled "e"). --data\_source: whether the citation information originated in the USPTO database ("u"), in the EPO's database ("e"), or in the PCT database ("w").