Patent standards explorer

The EPO cited SDO documents dataset highlights how documents from standards development organisations (SDOs) are cited in European patent applications. Developed using the PATSTAT 2024b edition, it focuses on non-patent literature (NPL) citations, identifying those linked specifically to SDOs through XP number ranges defined in EPO's internal databases. The dataset brings clarity to a subset of prior art that is otherwise difficult to isolate in standard PATSTAT tables.

In total, it captures 168 620 distinct XP numbers cited in 417 951 instances across 190 116 patent applications. These records reflect the outcome of extensive processing and structured examination practices at the EPO and include citations from EPO search reports as well as select international offices. You can download the full dataset as a ZIP archive containing all files via the link below.

More details on the methodology and data structure are provided in section 3 of the study Standards and the European patent system.