Count citations per application authority

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mboch
Posts: 3
Joined: Wed Mar 13, 2019 11:10 am

Count citations per application authority

Post by mboch » Tue May 03, 2022 2:34 pm

Hi together,

I've tried to adapt the query from forward-and-backward-citation-7892
My goal was to get the number of forward citations (family level) per year + authority.
Is this the right approach to do this?

Code: Select all

select a.earliest_publn_year, a.appln_auth, count(distinct a_cite.docdb_family_id) 
from tls201_appln a 
  join tls211_pat_publn p on p.appln_id = a.appln_id
  join tls212_citation c on  p.pat_publn_id = c.cited_pat_publn_id  
  join tls211_pat_publn p_cite on p_cite.pat_publn_id = c.pat_publn_id  
  join tls201_appln a_cite on a_cite.appln_id = p_cite.appln_id
where
  p.publn_first_grant = 'Y' and
  a.granted = 'Y' and -- granted of the cited documents
 a.earliest_publn_year between 2011 and 2021 and
  c.cited_pat_publn_id <> 0  -- only count citations to patent publications
  group by  a.earliest_publn_year, a.appln_auth
 order by appln_auth
 
BR
Michael


EPO / PATSTAT Support
Posts: 424
Joined: Thu Feb 22, 2007 5:33 pm
Contact:

Re: Count citations per application authority

Post by EPO / PATSTAT Support » Thu May 05, 2022 11:33 am

Hello Michael,
from a syntax point of view, your query is correct. From a logical point of view:

Just keep in mind that your WHERE condition "p.publn_first_grant = 'Y'" will result in only counting very specifically the citations that refer to the publication of the grant. Also: the WHERE condition "a.granted = 'Y'" becomes superfluous because any patent application having a publication that is flagged as "p.publn_first_grant = 'Y'" will by default be a granted application. (the other way around is not always true)
If we generally accept that patent examiners will normally cite the earliest publication (for EP this would be the A publication) in order to obtain the "earlier publication date" which is crucial for defining the prior art, then you will effectively miss out a lot of citations in your count by only looking at the publications of the grants (for EP: B1 publication)

To illustrate this, take below query and run it with and without the first line in the WHERE clause and observe the difference.

Code: Select all

select a.earliest_publn_year, a.appln_auth, count(distinct a_cite.docdb_family_id) 
from tls201_appln a 
  join tls211_pat_publn p on p.appln_id = a.appln_id
  join tls212_citation c on  p.pat_publn_id = c.cited_pat_publn_id  
  join tls211_pat_publn p_cite on p_cite.pat_publn_id = c.pat_publn_id  
  join tls201_appln a_cite on a_cite.appln_id = p_cite.appln_id
where
-- p.publn_first_grant = 'Y' and
  a.earliest_publn_year between 2011 and 2021 and
  c.cited_pat_publn_id <> 0  -- only count citations to patent publications
  and a.appln_id  in (442564008) --just 1 application to illustrate
  group by  a.earliest_publn_year, a.appln_auth
 order by appln_auth
Depending on the nature of your research, I would prefer to stay with the pre-calculated forward citations count. But as this count is (citing-cited) family based, it might not be useful if you really need an aggregation at application authority level as you do (for whatever research purpose).
PATSTAT Support Team
EPO - Vienna
patstat @ epo.org


mboch
Posts: 3
Joined: Wed Mar 13, 2019 11:10 am

Re: Count citations per application authority

Post by mboch » Mon May 09, 2022 9:53 am

Thank you for your help!

Yes, I am looking at how many patent families are cited per year by authority.

I still have a question about the aggregated field. If I use your example query I get 12 families, but if I look at the column nb_citing_docdb_fam of this application it's 18 families. Where does this difference comes from?

BR
Michael


EPO / PATSTAT Support
Posts: 424
Joined: Thu Feb 22, 2007 5:33 pm
Contact:

Re: Count citations per application authority

Post by EPO / PATSTAT Support » Thu May 12, 2022 3:36 pm

The query only looks at the forward citations for 1 single patent application.
Namely application US201314419139 filed on 2013-08-02. But this application belongs to a family containing 11 applications (today on 12-05-2022 !)

Code: Select all

 SELECT *   FROM tls201_appln
where docdb_family_id= 76606920 -- docdb_family_id for the US201314419139
And when you look at the results you will see 11 different patent applications.
Each of those applications can have different citations, but the total will be a selection of applications coming from 18 patent families.
The query below gives you a list of 34 citing publications that originate from those18 patent families.(Count the number of different docdb_family_id's in the second column.)

Code: Select all

SELECT distinct citing_app.appln_auth + citing_app.appln_nr as citing_application, citing_app.docdb_family_id,
citing.publn_auth+citing.publn_nr+citing.publn_kind as citing_publication, tls212_citation.pat_publn_id,
tls212_citation.citn_id,tls212_citation.citn_origin,tls212_citation.cited_pat_publn_id,tls212_citation.cited_appln_id,
tls212_citation.cited_npl_publn_id,citing.publn_date, cited.publn_auth+cited.publn_nr as cited_publication,
cited.publn_date, cited_app.docdb_family_id
FROM
  tls201_appln citing_app join tls211_pat_publn citing on citing_app.appln_id = citing.appln_id  
  join tls212_citation on citing.pat_publn_id = tls212_citation.pat_publn_id
  left join tls211_pat_publn cited on tls212_citation.cited_pat_publn_id = cited.pat_publn_id
  join tls201_appln cited_app on cited.appln_id = cited_app.appln_id
where cited_app.docdb_family_id= 76606920 
As a researcher, it is of course good that one understands what is behind this data, but the table tls228_docdb_fam_citn will give you all the "citations pairs at family level" without any further due. But if you really want to use the application authority of the citing and cited applications, then you will need to use the larger, detailed query above that establishes the link between the cited and citing applications via the tls212_citations table. (and not tls228_docdb_fam_citn that only has citing and cited patent families).
PATSTAT Support Team
EPO - Vienna
patstat @ epo.org


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