Trademark Citations

curl "https://api.signa.so/v1/trademarks/tm_8kLm2nPq/citations?action_stage=final&limit=20" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $SIGNA_API_KEY"

{
  "object": "list",
  "data": [
    {
      "id": "cit_0198c2f1-7e2a-7b34-9c11-3d5f8a2b4c6e",
      "object": "citation",
      "office_code": "US",
      "application_ref": "98123456",
      "trademark": {
        "id": "tm_8kLm2nPq",
        "mark_text": "ACME",
        "office_code": "US",
        "application_number": "98123456",
        "registration_number": null,
        "status_primary": "pending"
      },
      "cited_ref": "5567890",
      "cited_ref_type": "registration",
      "cited_trademark": {
        "id": "tm_019f34d6-2000-7777-8888-000000000001",
        "mark_text": "ACME CO",
        "office_code": "US",
        "application_number": "87999999",
        "registration_number": "5567890",
        "status_primary": "active"
      },
      "refusal_type": "2d",
      "action_date": "2026-01-15",
      "action_stage": "final",
      "disposition": "maintained",
      "disposition_as_of": "2026-08-30T13:30:00.000Z",
      "source_document_id": "med_0198c2f1-7e2a-7b34-9c11-3d5f8a2b4c6e"
    }
  ],
  "has_more": false,
  "pagination": { "cursor": null },
  "request_id": "req_cV2nL8pQ"
}

GET

trademarks

{id}

citations

curl "https://api.signa.so/v1/trademarks/tm_8kLm2nPq/citations?action_stage=final&limit=20" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $SIGNA_API_KEY"

{
  "object": "list",
  "data": [
    {
      "id": "cit_0198c2f1-7e2a-7b34-9c11-3d5f8a2b4c6e",
      "object": "citation",
      "office_code": "US",
      "application_ref": "98123456",
      "trademark": {
        "id": "tm_8kLm2nPq",
        "mark_text": "ACME",
        "office_code": "US",
        "application_number": "98123456",
        "registration_number": null,
        "status_primary": "pending"
      },
      "cited_ref": "5567890",
      "cited_ref_type": "registration",
      "cited_trademark": {
        "id": "tm_019f34d6-2000-7777-8888-000000000001",
        "mark_text": "ACME CO",
        "office_code": "US",
        "application_number": "87999999",
        "registration_number": "5567890",
        "status_primary": "active"
      },
      "refusal_type": "2d",
      "action_date": "2026-01-15",
      "action_stage": "final",
      "disposition": "maintained",
      "disposition_as_of": "2026-08-30T13:30:00.000Z",
      "source_document_id": "med_0198c2f1-7e2a-7b34-9c11-3d5f8a2b4c6e"
    }
  ],
  "has_more": false,
  "pagination": { "cursor": null },
  "request_id": "req_cV2nL8pQ"
}

When To Use This

Use this endpoint when you are looking at one application and need to know what the examiner put in its way. Each row is one prior mark cited in one office action against this application, with the stage the citation reached and how it ultimately resolved. This is the inbound direction. For the outbound direction, the applications this mark was cited against, use Trademark Cited By.

Coverage today is USPTO only. Citations are extracted from USPTO office actions and cover §2(d) likelihood-of-confusion refusals. Other offices return an empty list. Check capabilities.citations on List Offices to see the state of any office programmatically, rather than inferring coverage from an empty response.

Freshness

Citations are extracted hourly from stored office actions. Dispositions are recomputed once a day, so a newly extracted citation carries disposition: null until the next daily refresh, which can be up to about 24 hours. A disposition can also change on a later run as prosecution continues. disposition_as_of is stamped when the current disposition was first derived or last changed, and deliberately does not move when a daily run re-derives the same value. An unchanged timestamp means the disposition has been stable, not that the refresh stopped running.

Path Parameters

string

required

Trademark ID (tm_...). This is the citing application, the mark the office action was issued against.

Query Parameters

string

Filter by how the citation resolved, comma-separated. One or more of citation_issued, maintained, withdrawn, abandoned_after, published. Rows whose disposition has not been computed yet are excluded when this filter is supplied.

string

Filter by the stage the citation reached, comma-separated. One or both of nonfinal, final. final includes citations first raised in a nonfinal action that a later final action maintained.

integer

default:"20"

Page size (1-100).

string

Opaque cursor from the previous response’s pagination.cursor.

Results are ordered by action_date descending, newest first, with undated actions last and id as the final tiebreaker. The order is fixed: there is no sort parameter.

Response

string

Always list.

object[]

Show Citation object

string

Citation ID (cit_...).

string

Always citation.

string | null

Office that issued the action, uppercase ST.3 (e.g. US).

string

Application number the office action was issued against, as printed by the office.

object | null

Summary of the citing application (id, mark_text, office_code, application_number, registration_number, status_primary). On this endpoint it is the mark in the path.

string

The prior mark reference the examiner cited, as an application or registration number.

string

Whether cited_ref is a registration or an application number.

object | null

Summary of the cited prior mark, same fields as trademark. null when the citation carries no persisted link to a Signa record, in which case cited_ref is the only identifier available. It does not mean the cited mark is absent from the register: resolution runs once, at extraction time, so a mark ingested after its citations were extracted keeps a null link. Read it as “matched by reference only”.

string

Office-local refusal ground. 2d is the USPTO §2(d) likelihood-of-confusion ground. This vocabulary is office-scoped, not canonical across offices.

string | null

ISO date of the office action (YYYY-MM-DD).

string | null

nonfinal or final. This is the stage the citation reached, not provenance about source_document_id. A citation first raised in a nonfinal action reads final once a later dated final action maintained the refusal, so final does not mean the row was extracted from a final action.

string | null

How the citation resolved. See the table below. null while pending the daily refresh.

string | null

ISO 8601 timestamp of when the current disposition was first derived or last changed. It does not advance when a daily run re-derives the same value, so a stale-looking timestamp means the disposition has been stable.

string | null

The office action the citation was extracted from (med_...), retrievable through Trademark Documents on the mark in the path, which is always the citing mark here. Every citation served today carries one. The field is nullable so a citation derived without a stored source document can be represented.

boolean

Whether more citations are available.

object

Cursor for the next page.

string

Unique request identifier for support and debugging.

Disposition Values

A citation carries exactly one disposition, derived from the application’s later prosecution events and from whether the citation reappeared in subsequent office actions.

Value	Meaning
`published`	The application published or registered after the citation date. The citation did not stop it.
`maintained`	The refusal reached a final office action. The citation held.
`abandoned_after`	The application went abandoned after the citation date and was not revived. The outcome of the citation itself is unknown, the application simply stopped.
`withdrawn`	A later citation-bearing office action for the same application dropped this reference, with no publication yet. The examiner backed off.
`citation_issued`	No later signal yet. The application is still in prosecution, or its event record does not yet support a stronger label.
`null`	The disposition has not been computed yet. Recomputed on the daily refresh.

When more than one signal applies, the strongest one wins, in this order: published, maintained, abandoned_after, withdrawn, citation_issued. A mark that was cited, refused to final, and then abandoned reads maintained, because a refusal held to final is the more informative fact. The action_stage and the mark’s own status remain on the record for anyone who needs the detail.

Example Request

curl "https://api.signa.so/v1/trademarks/tm_8kLm2nPq/citations?action_stage=final&limit=20" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $SIGNA_API_KEY"

Example Response

{
  "object": "list",
  "data": [
    {
      "id": "cit_0198c2f1-7e2a-7b34-9c11-3d5f8a2b4c6e",
      "object": "citation",
      "office_code": "US",
      "application_ref": "98123456",
      "trademark": {
        "id": "tm_8kLm2nPq",
        "mark_text": "ACME",
        "office_code": "US",
        "application_number": "98123456",
        "registration_number": null,
        "status_primary": "pending"
      },
      "cited_ref": "5567890",
      "cited_ref_type": "registration",
      "cited_trademark": {
        "id": "tm_019f34d6-2000-7777-8888-000000000001",
        "mark_text": "ACME CO",
        "office_code": "US",
        "application_number": "87999999",
        "registration_number": "5567890",
        "status_primary": "active"
      },
      "refusal_type": "2d",
      "action_date": "2026-01-15",
      "action_stage": "final",
      "disposition": "maintained",
      "disposition_as_of": "2026-08-30T13:30:00.000Z",
      "source_document_id": "med_0198c2f1-7e2a-7b34-9c11-3d5f8a2b4c6e"
    }
  ],
  "has_more": false,
  "pagination": { "cursor": null },
  "request_id": "req_cV2nL8pQ"
}

Code Examples

curl -G "https://api.signa.so/v1/trademarks/tm_8kLm2nPq/citations" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer sig_YOUR_KEY_HERE" \
  --data-urlencode "disposition=maintained" \
  --data-urlencode "limit=20"

import { Signa } from "@signa-so/sdk";

const signa = new Signa({ api_key: process.env.SIGNA_API_KEY });

const citations = await signa.trademarks.citations("tm_8kLm2nPq", { limit: 20 });

for (const citation of citations.data) {
  console.log(citation.action_date, citation.cited_ref, citation.disposition);
}

import requests

resp = requests.get(
    "https://api.signa.so/v1/trademarks/tm_8kLm2nPq/citations",
    headers={"Authorization": "Bearer sig_YOUR_KEY_HERE"},
    params={"disposition": "maintained", "limit": 20},
)

Counting Without Listing

Retrieve Trademark returns citations_count for the same set of rows. 0 means the office is covered and this mark has no citations. null means citations are not counted for that office at all, which is not the same as “no citations exist”. Use capabilities.citations on List Offices to tell the two apart.

Errors

Status	Type	Description
400	`validation_error`	Malformed `id` (not a prefixed ID), unknown query parameter, or bad enum value
400	`id_type_mismatch`	`id` is a well-formed ID of another type (e.g. `own_...`) rather than a `tm_...`
400	`cursor_expired`	Cursor is blank, expired, or was issued for a different endpoint
401	`unauthorized`	Missing or invalid API key
403	`forbidden`	API key lacks the `trademarks:read` scope
404	`not_found`	Trademark ID does not exist
429	`rate_limited`	Rate limit exceeded

Trademark Cited By: applications this mark was cited against
Search Citations: cross-mark citation query with office, date, and disposition filters
Retrieve Trademark: parent mark detail, including citations_count
Trademark Documents: the office actions citations are extracted from

Overview

Trademarks

Parties

Records

Intelligence

Filing & docketing

Monitoring

Analytics

Reference

Administration

SDK

When To Use This

Freshness

Path Parameters

Query Parameters

Response

Disposition Values

Example Request

Example Response

Code Examples

Counting Without Listing

Errors

​When To Use This

​Freshness

​Path Parameters

​Query Parameters

​Response

​Disposition Values

​Example Request

​Example Response

​Code Examples

​Counting Without Listing

​Errors

​Related Endpoints

When To Use This

Freshness

Path Parameters

Query Parameters

Response

Disposition Values

Example Request

Example Response

Code Examples

Counting Without Listing

Errors

Related Endpoints