Search API

Citations

What a patent cites, and what cites it. Backward citations come in four categories; forward citations are the later US grants that cite this document.

GEThttps://api.patentgrep.com/v1/patents/{doc_id}/citations

Totals count citation rows in our corpus, not unique patents worldwide. Documents we can't resolve have a null docId and an external url.

Response200Recorded 11 Oct 2026

{
  "docId": "US12756070B2",
  "state": "available",
  "reason": null,
  "direction": "backward",
  "category": "us-grant",
  "totalRows": 1,
  "countScope": "US grant-source citation rows in the indexed corpus, document-specific",
  "page": 1,
  "pageSize": 3,
  "nextPage": null,
  "nextCursor": null,
  "items": [
    {
      "sourceDocId": "US12756070B2",
      "sourceNumber": "12756070",
      "sequence": 0,
      "citedBy": "cited by examiner",
      "target": {
        "type": "us-grant",
        "number": "10476114",
        "country": "US",
        "docId": "US10476114B2",
        "title": "Rechargeable battery safety by multifunctional separators and electrodes",
        "date": "2019-11-12",
        "citationDate": "2019-11-01",
        "text": "Cui",
        "url": "/patent/US10476114B2"
      }
    }
  ]
}

Query parameters

directionenumDefault backward

backwardWhat this document cites.forwardLater US grants that cite this document.

categoryenumDefault us-grant

Backward only: us-grant, us-publication, foreign or other (non-patent literature).

page_sizeinteger1–100

Rows per page.

pageinteger1–100

Follow nextPage until it's null. Offsets stop at 9,900 rows.

cursorstring

For longer lists, pass nextCursor with the same direction, category and page size, and leave out page.

curl -G https://api.patentgrep.com/v1/patents/US12756070B2/citations \
  -H "X-Api-Key: $PATENTGREP_KEY" \
  -d direction=forward \
  -d page_size=100

Response

totalRowsinteger

Citation rows in this direction and category.

items[].targetobject

The other document: type, number, country, docId when we have it, title, date and, for non-patent literature, text.

items[].citedBystring or null

Who added the citation, such as cited by examiner.

nextPage, nextCursorinteger, string or null

How to get the next page.