DOCUMENTATION FOR THE "UCITES_15.TXT" PATENT BIBLIOGRAPHIC DATA EXTRACT FILE ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- UREF_DOC_15.TXT 7/7/2016 8:51PM 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 Patent Bibliographic Information - U.S. Patent Citations -------------------------------------------------------- Notes ----- The "UREF_DOC_15.TXT" data file generally includes US patent citations for utility, design, plant, and reissue patents, defensive publications, and statutory invention registrations issued by the US Patent and Trademark Office. U.S. patent citations are included for utility patents issued from 1/1/1975 to 12/31/2015. U.S. 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. Please note that a citing patent will not appear in the data extract file unless it includes at least one citation in the U.S. cited patent field. - 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 9-80 : Cited patent (note that cited patent documents beginning with a "B" are re-examination patents, e.g., B1, B2, B3; also, please note that cited published patent applications are also included in this field) (character field) 96,414,189 records, CY 2015 File size: 1,728,873,498 bytes (about 1.7 GB) File name: UCITES_15.TXT - A list of the citing patent numbers that do not correspond to actual patents is included 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 Since these "withdrawn" patent numbers do not correspond to valid documents, they are excluded, as citing patents, from the custom patent bibliographic data extract files.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 patents are 7 characters long. However, some entries are longer. Many of the entries that are longer than 7 characters are errors from the raw file. However, some of these entries appear to be legitimate such as re-exam patents (i.e., "B1#######"). Cited published patent applications, as included in this field, also are longer than 7 characters and have the 4 digit publication year as a prefix. - In the raw data files from which these citation data were extracted, X-Series cited patents sometimes are listed as simply X-Series, at least for many of the earliest citing patents listed in this file. Some of these numbers have been modified to "X" plus the issue date (8 characters) plus a blank space plus the inventor name (e.g., X18320905 Willis; it's not perfect but at least some information is provided). In later years, X-series patents appear as an "X" followed by the number (e.g., for X-patents cited by patents which were granted in Aug/Sep of 1997). The X number has been zero filled to a total field length of 7 characters (e.g. X2005 becomes X002005 in the file). - Note that the APS raw patent data file documentation indicates that cited U.S. defensive publications will appear in the "Other Citations" section of the patent and not in the US Patent References section. - ** NOTE ** Although efforts have been made to remove duplicate citation entries, some duplicate entries may remain. - The reexam patent cited documents (for example, those prefixed with B1, B2, B3, etc. ) often have more than 7 characters. - The data are sorted first by citing patent document number and then by cited patent document number. - Citing patents that are missing from the U.S. citation data extract 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 file are utility patents granted in 1975. - A small sample of the data contained in the data extract file, "UCITES_15.TXT", is included in a separate file, "SAMPLE_UCITES_15.TXT."