APA 7th Citation Guide

General Guidelines

• Ensure your punctuation is correct:  Write the title of the patent in italics and in sentence case and follow it immediately with the U.S. Patent No. in parentheses.
• Ensure your formatting is correct
  • ​Follow our red format structure and view our examples in black. E.g. For the elements of the reference we have italicized, you also italicize that same element in your reference.

• Insert the stable URL to the patent at the end - optional:  Inserting a URL to the patent is optional. If you do, ensure it is a stable URL direct to the patent.

Basic principles of Patent citations are covered in Section 11.8 of the APA Publication Manual, Seventh Edition. 

Specific Guidelines

​​The URL of the patent is optional but may be included if available.

Format

Inventor, A. A. (Year of issue). Title of patent (U.S. Patent No. x,xxx,xxx). U.S. Patient and Trademark Office.URL

Examples

Hiremath, S.C., Kumar, S., Lu, F., & Salehi, A. (2016). Using metaphors to present concepts across different intellectual domains (U.S. Patent No. 9,367,592). U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?patentnumber=9367592

Citing In-Text: Example of one of the references

(Hiremath et al., 2016) OR Hiremath et al. (2016)

For more details and examples on how to reference patents, consult the following section in the APA 7th Publication Manual:

Section 11.8 Patents

Augusta University provides free access to EndNote citation management tool students, faculty, and staff.

If you use EndNote to input your references, then choose the reference type underneath. If you export or import your citations, then check that EndNote automatically categorized them to the below reference type. Edit the reference type if it is incorrect.  

Reference Type:  Patent