patent-family-tracing

name	patent-family-tracing
description	Forward/backward patent citation and priority tracing until saturation
execution	tactic
used-by	patent-mining

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-detection SOP 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)