Overview

Cross-citing prior art references is the process of copying references in one or more (likely related) matters to another matter. You would typically do this when a new matter is added to a matter family, such as a continuation or divisional application. Normally you would want all references associated with the matter family to be copied to the new matter, but this may not always be the case. AppColl support easily cross-citing references in either situation. Note that when cross-citing references, AppColl will not create duplicates. For non-patent references, AppColl ignores an non-alphanumeric characters when checking for duplicates.

Cross-citing all references in a matter family

Before you can cross-cite all references in a matter family you must first ensure that all matters in the family are correctly connected. The matter family is created by making connections. When importing matters from the USPTO or Espacenet, AppColl will automatically add connections. When adding new matters, you will need to manually add connections to priority applications. This is done using the connections Add button on the matter details page. The list of matters in the family related to the current matter is shown on the left of the page.

 To cross-cite all references in a family to a matter do the following:

1. Go to the Prior Art page.
2. Check the box next to the matter you wish to cite all the family's prior art.
3. Click on the Cross-Cite button in the Make Changes section of the left column.
4. Click the OK button in the popup window. AppColl will now associate the prior art from all related matters to the the target matter. 

Cross-citing references between selected matters

You may wish to make the set of references for a specific set of matters the same, ignoring matter families. To do this, perform the following steps:

1.  Go to the Prior Art page.
2. Select all matters that you wish to have the same superset of references.
3. Click on the Selected Cross-Cite button
4. Click on the Ok button in the popup window.

All of the selected matters will now have the same superset of references. For example, if you select 3 matters that have references AX, ABC, and BXY respectively, all matters will have references ABCXY after the cross-cite.

Copy selected references from one matter to another

If you simply want to copy a selected set of references from one matter to another, this is done using the following steps.

1. Open the prior art page for the matter by clicking on the relevant line in the Matter Prior Art page.
2. Select the references you wish to copy to the other matter.
3. Click on the Link Refs To Matter button.
4. Search for and select the destination matter.
5. Specify the citation status for the references in the destination.
6. Click on the Link button.