The Common Citation Document (CCD) application is a patent information tool developed by the Trilateral Offices to provide single point access to citation data for their examined patent applications. It consolidates the prior art cited by all participating offices for the family members of a patent application, thus enabling the search results for the same invention produced by several offices to be visualised on a single page.
Right from its launch in November 2011, the Trilateral Offices planned that the CCD service would graduate to the IP5 level and extend its coverage to citation data from the two remaining IP5 Offices (China and South Korea). In anticipation of this, the CCD service moved to the five IP offices' website.
Access Common Citation Document on the five IP offices' website
The creation of the CCD application is part of an ongoing process of technical harmonisation at the international level aimed at establishing an appropriate infrastructure to facilitate greater integration of the global patent system.