ThomasMoreAI Patent Family Tracing
Traces patent citation networks and priority chains in both directions (forward citations, backward citations, priority links) until the search space saturates.
Stages
1. Seed Identification
- Accept seed patents from calling strategy
- Validate patent numbers and retrieve basic metadata
- Establish initial frontier set
2. Priority Chain Tracing
- For each seed, trace priority/continuation chain to find all family members
- Identify provisional applications, continuations, divisionals, CIPs
- Record priority dates and filing jurisdictions
3. Citation Expansion (Forward)
- Find all patents that cite the seed/family patents
- Assess relevance of citing patents to the target technology
- Add relevant citations to the frontier
4. Citation Expansion (Backward)
- Find all patents cited by the seed/family patents
- Trace backward to foundational prior art
- Add relevant references to the frontier
5. Saturation Check
- Use
saturation-detectionSOP to determine if expansion has converged - Convergence criteria: <5% new relevant patents per iteration
- If not saturated, return to Stage 3 with expanded frontier
Available SOPs
| SOP | Role |
|---|---|
| patent-query-formulation | Generate queries for citation lookup |
| citation-network-analysis | Analyze the citation graph structure |
| legal-status-assessment | Check status of discovered family members |
| saturation-detection | Determine when expansion has converged |
Execution Guidance
- Run priority chain tracing first — this gives complete family coverage before citation expansion
- Forward citations are more likely to reveal recent developments
- Backward citations reveal foundational prior art
- Limit citation depth to 3 generations unless strategy requires more
- Deduplicate by patent family (same priority) not by individual publication
Yield Report
Report to calling strategy after each execution:
- New patent families discovered this iteration
- Total frontier size
- Saturation percentage
- Depth reached (citation generations)