Searching / filtering for citing documents - ct field?

[paulkaye]

I have a few questions regarding searching / filtering for citing documents.

(1) The pocket guide does not really explain what the ct field does. It gives an example of ct=ep1000000, but it doesn't explain what results would be returned. Would that search return documents that ep1000000 cites, or documents that cite ep1000000?

(2) Are citations specific to individual documents, or to patent families? For example, if a US patent application became a granted US Patent, and a Continuation was filed, if I were to look for citing documents, would the query return (i) only documents that cited the original application, (ii) documents that cited the original application and also documents that cited the resulting granted patent, or (iii) documents that cited the original application, documents that cited the resulting granted patent, and also documents that cited the Continuation?

(3) I'd like to be able to search for documents that cite any of a group of other documents. That is, continuing with the example above, I'd like to find documents that cite any of: ep1000000, ep1000001, or ep1000002. Is this possible within Espacenet?

Thanks in advance!

[Patent Information Marketing]

Dear user,

Thank you for your questions.

(1) ct=EP1000000 will search citing documents, i.e. patent documents that cite EP1000000.

(2) Searching for citing documents with "ct" or consulting the "Citing documents" view is specific to individual documents.

Illustration for the use of "ct":
ct=US10026281B2 retrieves 10 citing documents
ct=US2018144593A1 retrieves 6 citing documents (US2018144593A1 is the prior application to US10026281B2)
ct=US2018049563A1 retrieves 8 citing documents (US2018049563A1 is a continuation in part of US10026281B2)

Cited documents can't be searched but they are displayed on the "Citations - Cited documents". By default, Espacenet shows cited documents specific to the consulted document. You can, however, display the cited documents of the whole family by clicking on the patent number between the "Cited documents" and "Citing documents". Espacenet will then enable you to select the cited documents of the "Family of the consulted document".

(3) You can search citing documents of different patent documents in one go. Referring to the example above, you can use the following query ct any "US10026281B2 US2018144593A1 US2018049563A1", which retrieves 13 citing documents. This query has the same effect as using the "OR" operator in the following query: ct=US10026281B2 OR ct=US2018144593A1 OR ct=US2018049563A1.

In this case, Espacenet only find 13 citing documents for the three US documents (and not the sum (10 + 6 + 8 = 24)) because they share some citing documents (e.g. the retrieved citing document US10977914B2 cites the three documents).

Kind regards,

Andrée
Patent Information Marketing

[paulkaye]

Thanks for such a clear and complete answer, Andrée!