>Patent Citations in US Patents
>
>What relation do patents cited on the front cover of a patent document have
>to those within the patent document?
>
>I'm I right in thinking that those on the front are applied by the patent
>examiner in order to map out the landscape of the prior art? If this is the
>case, how do they correspond to citations in the background section of the
>patent document? And, do they break down in a similar way (i.e. as directly
>related to the invention, indirectly related to the invention, as
>within and superseded by the citing patent, as disclosing equipment,
>processes and methods useful for producing the invention etc.)?
>
>Illumination on any of these questions would be much appreciated.
>
>==================================
>Max Brady
>Science Policy Research Unit
>Mantell Building
>University of Sussex
>Falmer, Brighton BN1 9RF
>United Kingdom
This has been an idle curiosity with me for a couple years. This is
my understanding after poking around a little:
If the examiner actually considers the citation in the background
section then it should appear in the list on the front page. If the
examiner does not rely on this citation but on prior art he considers more
relavant then the citation does not get listed on the front page.
Anything listed in the Information Disclosure Statement (IDS) is
supposed to appear in the References Cited on the front page. One wonders
why a patent disclosed and discussed in the Background section could fail to
appear in the IDS and than on the front page, but I have seen it happen.
The References Cited section list the patents in numerical order
with no explanation of relevance. The connection between the subject patent
and the cited patent ranges from direct to tenuous at best. I am of the
opinion that the first place to look for cited references is in the
Background section. There the applicant often explains the connection
between the invention which makes it easy to evaluate. Second to this is
the References Cited, which can lead to a lot of time to evaluate a list of
references which have very little relevance to the subject patent.
Regards,
Steve Reynolds
DuPont