Figure 1: Citation Family Structures

Family Example #1 - analyzes two forward generations out from the starting set (Gen 0)
              
Family Example #2 - analyzes one generation forward and one generation back from the starting set (Gen 0)
              
Family Example #3 - analyzes lateral co-cited relationships (cousins) and then analyzes one forward generation out from the co-cited patents
              

Citation Generation -- a set of citations/references either given or received by the patents in the initial set of records. See Figure 2.

Generation 0 ("Gen 0") -- patents in the initial set of records
Generation +1 ("Gen +1") -- the patents that cite/reference the patents in the initial set
Generation -1 ("Gen -1") -- the patents that the initial set of patents cites/references

Figure 2: Citation Generations

Earlier

Later

Enforcement: taking legal action to protect your patent rights

External Patent: a patent assigned to a competitor or an other outside organization.

Forward Citation Searching: searching for the patents that give citations/references to the patents in your set (i.e. searching for Gen +1 patents)

Frequently Cited: patents cited numerous times by the patent examiner on issued patents

International Patent Classification (IPC): Classification list available online at http://classifications.wipo.int/fulltext/new_ipc/.  

International Patent Protection: filing for patent protection in multiple countries  

Mean Age of Citations: For a set of patents (Gen 0), the mean of the ages of citations/references that the set gives to Gen -1 or that Gen +1 gives to the set. An age of a citation/reference is calculated by subtracting the issue date of the cited/referenced patent from the application date of the citing/referencing patent.

Patent Analytics: the overall process of reporting or visualizing patent mining results  

Patent Cousins: pairing of patents that are referenced by the same later patent  

Patent In-Licensing: purchasing of rights to use the technology covered in patents of another organization  

Patent Landscape: graphical representation of how large numbers of patents relate to each other based on keywords, citations, or patent classifications

Patent Licensing: selling or purchasing of rights to use the technology covered in a patent  

Patent Mapping: a way to visualize patent mining results that involves clustering or otherwise orienting patent data on a page so that there is meaning in the spatial relationships among the data points  

Patent Mining: the process of searching for meaningful trends, patterns, and relationships among patent records contained in patent databases

Patent Portfolio: a collection of patents owned by an organization  

Patent of the Same Age: patents that were granted in the same year  

Patent Out-Licensing: selling of rights to use the technology covered in a patent

Prior Art: body of knowledge that has been developed in the past

U.S. Class: U.S. Patent and Trademark Office subject classification. Classification list available online at http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/ac/ido/oeip/taf/def/.

U.S. Patent Citations (also called U.S. Patent References): mentions of earlier patents that appear on the front page of a patent document when that patent is issued. Citations/references are placed on the front page by a patent examiner and represent the most relevant prior art upon which the patent builds. See highlighted area of Figure 1, below.

Figure 3: Front page of a U.S. Patent Document