Cited documents

Cited documents are documents cited either during any of the procedures before the patent authority for a specific jurisdiction (search, examination, review, opposition, limitation, revocation or appeal), or by the applicant.

A cited document can be a patent document or an item of non-patent literature. These are shown whenever possible for the publication steps as provided by the originating Office.

We display all the cited documents available in our databases, regardless of their country of origin.

These cited documents are grouped by origin (search, examination, opposition, applicant) and type (patent and non-patent literature).

In Espacenet the bibliographic data of non-patent literature documents are only displayed if:

• they have been classified using the Cooperative Patent Classification system (CPC) or
• they have been cited in a search report produced by the EPO.

To view the list of cited documents available in our databases please consult our table on what is available in the EPO's citation database

Related topics

• Index
• Citing documents