Report:PatBase/Data Coverage/Patent Coverage/Citation Coverage
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Citation Coverage
For the purpose of this article, the term "citation" refers to a patent citation. To get more information on how we use the term citation, please see the citations article.
Until April 2007, PatBase citation data was supplied by the now-retired REFI (Reference File) citation database produced by the EPO, and also data supplied directly from the USPTO. At one time, REFI covered European Patent Office (EP) and Patent Cooperation Treaty (WO/PCT) examiners reports, as well as data supplemental data provided by Japan (JP), Australia (AU), Germany (DE) and the US to augment the file. An initiative was started in 2006 to further expand its coverage, and the current INPADOC/DOCDB product that has replaced REFI should include at least citations from those authorities.[1] In addition, a March 2007 newsletter from PatBase stated that citation data from search reports from a much wider range of countries were being added to the database. According to a PatBase representative in November 2011, PatBase covers citations from USPTO and REFI, which includes citation data for the following authorities:[2]
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In September of 2007, PatBase began loading non-patent citation data. This information can be viewed for individual documents in the citation search window, but it is not searchable and will not be covered in a full text search. According to the PatBase Manual, non-patent literature citations are covered for the US from 2000 to date and for the EPO and WO from 1978 to date.[3] See the Viewing Patent Citations section for more information.
Editor's Note:There have been several mysteries surrounding US citation data in particular. Notably, the current PatBase manual (as of October 2011) states that citation coverage for US documents only includes 1976 to present, whereas the full text US records go back to 1971. However, informal testing of the database has shown citation data for many earlier US records, and representatives confirm that coverage is continually expanding; one representative stated that citation coverage should match that available from the USPTO.
Also, at one point, some foreign citation data for US records was missing from the database. During the summer of 2007, some users noticed that foreign citations on US documents were not showing up as part of the system's electronic citation records. PatBase tech support explained that the missing data was due to an ongoing Doc.db reload, and the missing foreign citations appeared after the reload was completed. However, users were not notified of this missing data.
The March 2007 enhancement of citation data to supposedly include additional authorities EP, AU, BE, CH, CY, DE, DK, EP, ES, FI, FR, GB, GR, IT, JP, LU, NL, US, and WO is somewhat of a mystery, since it is unclear if there is a single data source for this enhancement. Competitor MicroPatent PatentWeb also announced a citation update to FR and JP collections in May 2007 (the only two collections besides US, EP, WO and DE that they provide), and in March 2008 Questel-Orbit announced patent and non-patent citation data from : BE, CH, NL, TR, AU, JP, BS, ES, SG, DK, LU, FI, CY, and IT in addition to existing coverage of citations from major authorities including EP, WO, US, DE, FR, GB and JP-A. These competitors have not divulged a particular source for this extended citation data, but our assumption is that all of these systems are limited to the citation data avaialble from the EPO's INPADOC/DOCDB file.
Finally, although PatBase has loaded non-patent citation data, the fact that this data is not searchable puts the system at a disadvantage when compared with others that do offer searchable non-patent citations, such as Thomson Innovation, MicroPatent PatentWeb, and Delphion.
Sources
- ↑ REFI Manual. EPO website, http://www.epo.org/patents/patent-information/raw-data/manuals.html. Accessed September 19, 2007.
- ↑ Personal e-mail correspondence with PatBase representative. Received on November 4, 2011.
- ↑ "PatBase Manual." PatBase website (restricted), http://www.patbase.com/Manual.pdf . Accessed November 2, 2011.
