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IPKit IPKit

lens_prior_art

Discover prior art for a patent by analyzing its citation network through Lens.org. Returns both patent citations and non-patent literature (scholarly articles) linked to the target patent. This scholarly-patent cross-linkage is a unique Lens.org capability not available from other IPKit providers. Requires a Lens.org API token.

Parameters

Section titled “Parameters”
ParameterTypeRequiredDescription
lensIdstringYesLens.org patent identifier (e.g., 095-621-040-202-546). Obtained from lens_patent_search results.

Example

Section titled “Example”

Request

Section titled “Request”
{
  "name": "lens_prior_art",
  "arguments": {
    "lensId": "042-637-313-850-140"
  }
}

Response

Section titled “Response”
{
  "patent": {
    "id": "US-10876543",
    "title": "Convolutional Neural Network for Medical Image Classification",
    "jurisdiction": "US"
  },
  "citations": {
    "scholarlyArticles": [
      {
        "text": "He, K. et al. \"Deep Residual Learning for Image Recognition.\" CVPR 2016.",
        "lensId": "112-893-445-012-378",
        "type": "npl",
        "category": "cited by examiner"
      },
      {
        "text": "Ronneberger, O. et al. \"U-Net: Convolutional Networks for Biomedical Image Segmentation.\" MICCAI 2015.",
        "lensId": "087-234-556-901-123",
        "type": "npl",
        "category": "cited by applicant"
      }
    ],
    "citedPatents": [
      {
        "lensId": "031-445-667-123-890",
        "jurisdiction": "US",
        "docNumber": "9922267",
        "category": "cited by examiner"
      },
      {
        "lensId": "055-778-990-234-567",
        "jurisdiction": "EP",
        "docNumber": "3125178",
        "category": "cited by applicant"
      }
    ],
    "citedByPatentCount": 23,
    "nplCount": 14,
    "patentCitationCount": 8
  },
  "metadata": {
    "executionTimeMs": 650
  }
}

Notes

Section titled “Notes”
  • Unique capability: lens_prior_art is the only IPKit tool that provides scholarly-patent citation cross-linkage. No other patent provider exposes non-patent literature (NPL) citations in a structured format.
  • The scholarlyArticles array contains non-patent literature references (journal papers, conference proceedings, books). Each entry may include a lensId that can be used to look up the scholarly article in the Lens.org scholarly database.
  • The citedPatents array lists patent documents cited by or in the target patent. Use the lensId from each entry with lens_patent_status to retrieve full details.
  • The category field indicates who cited the reference: "cited by examiner", "cited by applicant", or "cited by third party".
  • Citation arrays are capped at 50 entries each. The nplCount and patentCitationCount fields reflect the true totals from Lens.org, which may exceed the returned array lengths.
  • citedByPatentCount indicates how many later patents cite the target patent — a measure of the patent’s influence and technological significance.
  • Results are cached. Subsequent lookups for the same lensId return cached data.
Section titled “Related Tools”