You’ll need the GoVeda MCP server connected first. It takes about a minute. See Connect to Claude or ChatGPT to set it up. Once it’s connected, just ask your question; your assistant reaches for GoVeda on its own when a patent task needs it. New accounts get a 14-day free trial with 10,000 credits.
Citations are the closest thing patents have to a measure of influence. Forward citations show who built on an invention; backward citations show what it stood on. Ask GoVeda for both.
The prompt
Open a new chat and paste:
How many later patents cite US-8697359-B1 (a foundational CRISPR-Cas9 patent)? Give me its forward-citation count as a measure of impact, plus 4–5 notable citing patents by title, and briefly what earlier work it builds on.
What GoVeda does behind the scenes
Citations run two directions, and the assistant walks each one separately:
Identify the patent
It calls get_patent to confirm the document and read its abstract, so the citation counts are attached to the right invention.
Count who cites it (forward)
It calls get_patent_forward_citations for the later patents that cite this one, and reports the count as a measure of impact along with notable citing patents by title.
Trace what it builds on (backward)
It calls get_patent_backward_patent_citations for the earlier patents this one stands on, keeping the examiner relevance categories (X/Y/A) where the office recorded them so the closest competing prior art stands out. A companion tool, get_patent_backward_npl_citations, pulls cited non-patent literature such as papers and standards.
What you get
You get the forward-citation count as an impact signal (this CRISPR patent is cited by thousands of later filings) and a list of notable citing patents by title, so you can see who is building on it. The backward citations surface the closest competing prior art. For a heavily litigated patent, GoVeda flags that the citation graph is unusually tangled with litigation references.
Tips
Use forward-citation counts as a signal of influence, not a precise valuation. Foundational patents accumulate citations for years. To go deeper, ask GoVeda to break the citing patents down by assignee or filing year to see who is building on the invention most.
Next: browse more use cases or read the MCP tool reference.