Importing patent citations into citation managers
(Michael White at Queens University)
Citing patents (Univ of Ontario) - includes some hints on exporting patent citations
Summary of process:
1. Use Zotero to save patent records from Espacenet
2. Export Zotero records to an RIS file
3. Import RIS file into EndNote
The following fields are imported: Inventor names, assignee names, title, year, issue date, abstract, patent number, priority application numbers and link to the Espacenet record. The patent application number and patent classifications do not make the transition from Zotero to EndNote.
Steps in the process:
1. Do a search in Espacenet
2. Click on "Compact" to expand the search results list to 50 records. (You can add additional records for exporting by clicking on the "Load more results" button at the bottom of the list.)
3. Click on the "Save to Zotero" folder in your browser toolbar (See screenshot below.)
4. A new window will open called "Select Items" which displays the titles of the patents in your search results list.
5. Select the items you wish to export (you can select "All")
6. Click Okay and the selected items will be added to your Zotero library
7. Go to your Zotero library
8. Select the items you just exported from Espacenet
9. Right click and select "Export items"
10. Select RIS format (EndNote XML works as well)
11. Click Okay and save the RIS file to your desktop
12. Go to EndNote
13. Select "Import"
14. Select RIS file you saved in step 11
15. Make sure the Import Option is set to “Reference Manager (RIS)”
16. Click on "Import" and the file and records will be imported into your EndNote library.
17. End
Espacenet will also export records in CVS and XLS format. It is possible to import tab-delimited files into EndNote but that it requires a bit of work and data reformatting.
See http://www.freepatentsonline.com/bibliography.html .
Example of importing this patent from Free Patents Online
Reference Type: Patent
Record Number: 690
Inventor: Hirata, Katsuya (Ibaraki, JP)
Year: 2011
Title: Fuel cell
Country: United States
Assignee: Mitsubishi Materials Corporation (Tokyo, JP),The Kansai Electric Power Co., Inc. (Osaka, JP)
Application Number: 8034496
Short Title: Fuel cell
URL: http://www.freepatentsonline.com/8034496.html
EndNote is particular so if the metadata that Free Patents provides has some inappropriate hidden spaces, etc. that could cause issues. Note also that the metadata imported in is slender. A better approach if you’re working with open access sources is to use the free Firefox browser. You can quickly grab multiple patent citations from Free Patents into Firefox, export them out in the EndNote XML format and then import them into EndNote via the XML import filter. This produces richer metadata as well, including the abstract:
Reference Type: Patent
Record Number: 691
Inventor: Hirata, Katsuya
Year: 2011
Title: Fuel cell
Assignee: Mitsubishi Materials Corporation (Tokyo, JP) The Kansai Electric Power Co., Inc. (Osaka, JP)
Date: 10/11/2011
Short Title: Fuel cell
Patent Number: 8034496
Issue Date: 10/11/2011
Designated States: United States
Abstract: The present invention provides a highly efficient fuel cell having a fuel reformer which can efficiently recover the exhaust heat from fuel cell stacks and can realize high conversion. In a fuel cell (1), a large number of power generating cells (7) are laminated to constitute a fuel cell stack (3). At least four fuel cell stacks (3) are squarely-arranged in a plane direction in a housing (2). A fuel reformer (30) filled with a reforming catalyst (33) is arranged in a cross shape in between the mutually facing sides of the fuel cell stacks (3).
Access Date: 2015-08-28 16:11:56
Zotero can grab reference metadata for individual patents from WIPO’s Patentscope database. Saving groups of patents from the search results does not seem to work. Zotero also can be used to save either individual records or multiple records from search results in the USPTO database.
