Utilizing a novel methodology based on international family-to-family patent citation data,
this paper directly compares X/Y patent citations (ie, those cited as grounds for rejections,
equivalent to “blocking patents” in the US) between major patent offices. Remarkable
discrepancies between the offices were revealed, despite the common patentability criteria
of novelty and inventive step to generate citations. This paper then introduces a simple
cosine similarity measurement between a family of X/Y patent citations and all citations …

This paper compares X/Y patent citations (ie, those cited as grounds for rejections) between
major patent offices. It reveals discrepancies between the offices, despite the common
patentability criteria of novelty and inventive steps to generate citations. This paper also
examines how the discrepancies of X/Y patent citations at the European Patent