Automatic Citation Monitoring

Citation Monitoring

Citation monitoring is an important type of patent monitoring that involves tracking the citations made to a patent or patent application by other patents or scientific literature.
When a patent is cited by subsequent patents or publications, it indicates the relevance and influence of the original patent in the field.
By monitoring citations, businesses can gain insights into the impact of their own patents and track how their inventions are being referenced by others.
Citation monitoring can help businesses identify emerging trends, technologies, and potential collaborators or competitors.
Furthermore, it provides valuable information for evaluating the value and strength of a patent portfolio.
By understanding the citations to their patents, businesses can make informed decisions regarding licensing opportunities, potential infringement cases, and future R&D directions.
Citation monitoring is particularly valuable for research-focused organizations, technology transfer offices, and patent attorneys who need to stay up-to-date with the evolving landscape of scientific literature and patent developments.

Via PATOffice Citation Monitoring, we inform you as soon as a new publication in the official examination procedure cites one of your patents. For this purpose, we check all new publications from the data of the European Patent Office.
To ensure that all citations are found, we additionally monitor new publications from the data sources of individual countries.

Monitoring for citations is particularly useful as an add-on to IPC class monitoring. This way you can ensure that you are informed about interesting new publications in good time, even if they do not appear in the classes you monitor.

How to switch it on

In order to switch on citation monitoring for a patent in PATOffice please navigate to an according patent's detail view:



The column on the right side of the detail view is the place where you can actually work with the patent by rating, commenting or adjust monitoring settings.
To activate the citation monitoring for the patent, you can simply set the controller "Status" to green. Next to it, on the left hand side you can see the current citations amount.
Once new citations are added you will be notified accordingly.



Of course you can always deactivate the citation monitoring again by simply setting the controller back to grey.

How do I find an overview of patents with switched on citation monitoring?

You can also access your IP rights that you have included in the citation monitoring via your personal dashboard.



All new citations, that you should take a look at, can be found here ("New")



All patents that the citation monitoring is switched on for can be found here ("Active")



Once you click here, you will be directed to a filtered list in your search console, showing only patents you switched citation monitoring on for.

Updated on: 06/06/2023