Filed under: Patent basics
Patents can be ranked using several parameters such as no of claims /independent claims, expiry date, legal status, citations and more. Citations is one of the best parameter to indicate the relevancy or importance of the patents. Citations includes forward citations (citing patents) and backward citations (cited patents).
Relevancy or importance of the patents is directly proportional to the number of citations.
Citations are either provided by the examiner or the inventor during office action or during grant process of the patent. Normally citations provided by examiner will be much relevant compared to the citations provided by the inventor. Similarly, forward citations will be much relevant compared to the backward citations.
Weightage of the forward citations can be twice better than the backward citations.
Ideally the patent with more citations will be more valuable.
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