For questions about intellectual property law please consult an intellectual property attorney licensed in your state. Patents for the electronic commerce classes were indexed to create the patent bibliography database described below. The resulting database was analyzed for trend information. For instance, the patent reference information indicates the most frequently cited patent documents within a given class. Analysis of the cross relationships reveal that some of the highest citation counts are due to repetitive citations by the same Examiners.
Many authorities analyze patent citation frequency without regard to who cited the patent.
Examiners under severe time constraints in the examination process have an incentive to re-use a limited number of references. These references may not be the best references for a given technology but are cited because they have been cited in the past and are familiar to the primary examiners who must sign the action. I beleive the TopCites and WhoCitedWhat queries maay help identify this relationship. Graphing of the production cycle of any given Examiner is now possible . In analyzing this sample it should be borne in mind that the issue date is frequently 5-6 months later than the last action taken by the Examiner, therefore PTO count driven production spikes are frequently phase shifted by this amount.