Vancouver style
How to cite a patent in Vancouver style
Patents use official patent office country codes, filing vs issue dates, and unique patent numbers.
THE FORMAT
A patent in Vancouver, at a glance
#. Inventor AA, inventor; Assignee, assignee. Title of invention. Patent office patent xxxxxxx. Year Mon DD.
4. Tu Y, inventor; China Academy of Chinese Medical Sciences, assignee. Artemisinin extraction process for antimalarial therapy. Chinese patent ZL81100123.4. 1986 May 10.
Artemisinin extraction relies on low-temperature ether extraction.⁴
In prose: Tu⁴ patented the antimalarial extraction methodology.
Copyeditor formats APA, MLA, Chicago and IEEE automatically — cite a source once and the references builds itself. See how citations work .
BEFORE YOU FORMAT
What Vancouver needs from a patent
Elements to collect
- Inventor or inventors
- Year of patent issue
- Title of the invention
- Patent office (e.g., US Patent Office, European Patent Office)
- Patent number (e.g., U.S. Patent No. 10,945,678)
- URL or database source
Rules specific to this entry
- Vancouver rules mandate explicit role designations for patent entries: “inventor;” and “assignee;”.
- State the national patent office and official patent registration number in plain text.
- The publication date should give the full day, month, and year on which the patent was issued.
- If citing an international patent application (WIPO/PCT), list the international publication number.
Building the entry, step by step
Collect the details
Before you format anything, gather every element Vancouver needs for a patent: Inventor or inventors; Year of patent issue; Title of the invention; Patent office (e.g., US Patent Office, European Patent Office).
Build the references entry
Arrange those details in the Vancouver order: #. Inventor AA, inventor; Assignee, assignee. Title of invention. Patent office patent xxxxxxx. Year Mon DD.
Add the in-text citation
In the body of your paper, cite it as Artemisinin extraction relies on low-temperature ether extraction.⁴ — or work the same reference into your sentence as Tu⁴ patented the antimalarial extraction methodology..
Check it against the exceptions
Vancouver rules mandate explicit role designations for patent entries: “inventor;” and “assignee;”.
Vancouver RULES
The conventions behind every Vancouver entry
Citing Medicine (NLM), 2nd ed. — the reference standard behind Vancouver is the authority. Where a journal or department publishes its own house rules, those win — check your submission guidelines before the references is final.
The rules that apply across every source — author order, capitalization, how the references is sorted, and where Vancouver entries most often go wrong — are collected on the Vancouver style guide.
The same patent in another style
Switching styles late in a draft is normal. Here is the same source formatted five other ways.
Questions about Vancouver and patents
What if the patent has no author?
Start the entry with the title and keep the number you already assigned it. A numeric references never re-sorts for a missing author, so the entry stays exactly where it is.
What do I need before I can cite a patent?
Inventor or inventors, Year of patent issue, Title of the invention, and the rest of the elements listed above. Patents use official patent office country codes, filing vs issue dates, and unique patent numbers.
Is there anything unusual about a patent in Vancouver?
Vancouver rules mandate explicit role designations for patent entries: “inventor;” and “assignee;”.
What else catches people out here?
State the national patent office and official patent registration number in plain text.
Can I reformat this patent in another style later?
By hand, you would retype the entry — the element order, punctuation and italics all differ between styles. In Copyeditor, sources are stored as structured data, so switching between APA, MLA, Chicago and IEEE reformats every citation and the whole reference list at once.
Cite it once
and never reformat it again
Copyeditor keeps sources as structured data, so switching between APA, MLA, Chicago and IEEE reformats every citation and the whole references at once.
Deterministic Verification in Modern Academic Writing
Copyeditor eliminates fragmented tab-switching by unifying structured drafting, multi-style citation generation, academic tone refinement, and cryptographic process verification in one workspace.
The author approves every single sentence. Intelligent scaffolding assists with section outlines and literature integration without ghostwriting.
