DOCUMENTATION FOR THE "FCITES_15.TXT" PATENT BIBLIOGRAPHIC DATA EXTRACT FILE ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- FCITES_DOC_15.TXT 6/30/2016 6:52PM Questions about the custom patent data extract files should be directed to: US Patent and Trademark Office Electronic Information Products Division Patent Technology Monitoring Team P.O. Box 1450 Alexandria, VA 22313-1450 tel : (571) 272-5600 e-mail : oeip@uspto.gov Foreign Patent Citations ------------------------ Notes ----- *** PLEASE NOTE THAT DATE FIELDS NOW ARE IN "YYYY-MM-DD" FORMAT *** This custom patent data extract file, "FCITES_15.TXT", generally includes foreign patent citations for utility, design, plant, and reissue patents, defensive publications, and statutory invention registrations issued by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. Foreign patent citations are included for utility patents issued from 1/1/1975 to 12/31/2015. Foreign patent citations are included for design, plant, and reissue patents, defensive publications, and statutory invention registrations issued from 1/1/1977 to 12/31/2015. FCITES_DOC_15.TXT 18,508,661 records, CY 2015 File size: 631,382,635 bytes (about 631 MB) - The file format is as follows: - Columns 1-7 : Citing patent (i.e., issued patent that contains the citation references to other patents) (character field) - Columns 9-18 : Cited patent issue date ("YYYY-MM-DD" format) (character field) - Columns 20-22: Cited patent state-country code (character field) - Columns 24-82: Cited patent number (character field) The FOREIGN PATENT CITATIONS file is sorted by ascending patent number (primary). Each line is terminated with a carriage return and a line feed character (0D 0A in hexadecimal) after the last populated data field. Trailing blank spaces in each record may be removed to reduce the size of the file. - Dates are presented in "YYYY-MM-DD" format where YYYY is the four digit year, MM is the two digit month, and DD is the two digit day. - A list of the patent numbers that do not correspond to actual patents is supplied in the file, "WITHDRAWN_75_15_PN.TXT". Since these "withdrawn" patent numbers do not correspond to valid documents, they are excluded, as citing patents, from the data extract files. - A file "LASTPN_15.TXT" has been provided that displays the last patent number by year and patent document type. - Generally, the cited patent numbers are fairly short, in length. However, some entries are longer. Some of the entries, particularly some of the longer ones, may be errors as contained in the file. In addition, the format of the cited patent numbers may vary from record to record. - ** NOTE ** Although efforts have been made to remove duplicate citation entries, some duplicate entries may remain. - The data are sorted by citing patent document number, cited patent issue date, cited patent state-country code, and cited patent number. - Citing patents that are missing from the data file are listed in a separate file, "MISSING_15.TXT". In general, documents are missing from this file because the corresponding data were omitted from the original electronic text files produced for the patents issued each week. Most of the citing patents missing from the data extract files are utility patents granted in 1975. - State-country code data are generally the data that appeared in the raw files from which the bibliographic patent data were extracted. A file, "ST_CNTRY_15.TXT" contains state-country codes and corresponding U.S. state and country names. THE USER SHOULD NOTE THAT THE CODES DISPLAYED IN THE FOREIGN CITATION DATA ARE KNOWN TO INCLUDE SOME INCONSISTENCIES. FURTHERMORE, A FEW STATE-COUNTRY CODES THAT APPEAR IN THE DATA EXTRACT FILES MAY BE MISSING FROM THE "ST_CNTRY_15.TXT" FILE. - A small sample of the data contained in this data file is included in a separate file, "SAMPLE_FCITES_15.TXT."