Additional fields in patents

pjalet

Hello,

To generate patent search reports from Zotero I would need to be able to save some common fields for patents which are not currently part of this item category in Zotero:
- Priority date (we currently only have priority number)
- CPC/IPC classes
- Document numbers of patents and applications in the same family (what Espacenet refers to as "also published as")
- First claim
What would it take to add these fields?

adamsmith

I think we're likely to do priority date (https://github.com/citation-style-language/zotero-bits/issues/76 )

But while I understand the value of the other fields for dedicated work with patents, I just don't think Zotero and the underlying citation styles can do justice to that sort of detail (the same is true for other item types), so I don't think that'll happen. There has been talk of custom fields, that _would_ allow this and I think specialized communities are a principal target audience for those, but I don't think that's something likely to happen super soon.

pjalet

Zotero is about much more than just citations and thanks for that!
Of course that information would not be used in a regular citation style but it is nonetheless useful to store and review if only in the Zotero interface.

When working with patents it is common to produce spreadsheets or text documents which contain these extended bibliography fields. With Zotero's current export capabilities such reports would be straightforward to generate and extremely beneficial for technology researchers.

There are plenty of existing fields that I never use or reference (e.g., archive, loc. in archive or call number for reports) and I don't have any issue with that. What would be the downside of having these new fields?

bwiernik

For Patent specifically, my impression is that so few people outside of patent-focused fields use this type at all that adding relevant fields wouldn’t really impact other users at all.

hpxing

yes zotero needs to improve about patent

fbennett

@pjalet, @hpxing, others who might drive by...

I recently received a report against the formatting of patent cites in Jurism. I would like to solve the various issues around this type in one go. I can extend the fields available in Jurism, but I would need some guidance on the fields necessary and their meaning, and on the citation forms used in common use. In addition, the system should be supported by translators for the main services that capture the necessary data, and and extended export translator or translators that will be useful to researchers.

If you would like to collaborate on fixing things up in Jurism, please post back.

pjalet

@fbennett Missed that post, sorry. If that is still current I am happy to give you some inputs on fields and meanings. Since I am in engineering research I will not be able to help on the legal citation styles.

fbennett

@pjalet Thanks for writing back. If you work with engineering documents that cite patents, I'll be happy to adopt those forms for legal use, until someone from the legal domain comes forward with concrete and consistent ideas for improvement on those forms.

What publicly accessible service shall we use to go over the fields? Is Google Patents useful?

pjalet

I rarely use Google Patents but others do. The best publicly-accessible service I am aware of is Espacenet by the European Patent Office (https://worldwide.espacenet.com/patent). Other patent offices also maintain search services e.g., the USPTO (http://patft.uspto.gov/).

Citation of patents is generally compact. In communications related to the Patent cooperation treaty documents are referenced in the text as D1, D2, etc. and the list of cited documents takes the form
D1 US 2011/134521 A1 (SMITH JOHN [US] ET AL) 5 APRIL 2011
D2 FR 2 692 345 A1 (ALSTOM [FR]) 12 FEBRUARY 2012

The US patent office will use the form Martin et al. European Patent Publication No. EP1,423,443 A2 on first citation and then Martin et al.