The following may give a starting point for understanding the importance of being cited in the Patent applications of others:
"Patent citations
Patent citations work in much the same way as academic paper citations work except that instead of the citation being based on a voluntary scheme (such as with academic papers, where you only cite authors when you use some of their ideas etc), patent citations are added not only by the applicants of the patent, but also of the examiners of the patent application. Patents citations are determined by the examiner who, with the help of the data supplied by the applicant and their attorney, determines what citations are relevant or not (Leydesdorff 2006a). With these citations one can map, just as we did with the author and journal citations, the progress in a sense of the knowledge contained within the patent document. Trajtenberg (1990) argued that the number of citations of an individual patent was important and included a quote from The Office of Technology Assessment and Forecast in 1976 to demonstrate this.
…During the examination process, the examiner searches the pertinent portion of the “classified” patent file. His purpose is to identify any prior disclosures of technology …which might anticipate the claimed invention and preclude the issuance of a patent; which might be similar to the claimed invention and limit the scope of the patent protection….;or which, generally, reveal the state of the art of the technology to which the invention is directed…If such documents are found they are made known to the inventor and are “cited” in any patent which matures from the application…Thus, the number of times a patent document is cited may be a measure of its technological significance.
The number of citations a patent has can also been seen to be linked to the market value of the company owning the patent and the value of the technology (Hall, Jaffe et al. 2005).What we see is that it’s not just what patents cite yours, but also how many, which may determine the eventual value status of your patent and accordingly, your product.
Of course it’s not only citations within patents that can help an analysis, various other data contained within the patent documents also shed light on the subject you are investigating."
Assuming that you have followed the various quarterly up dates given by the CEO from at least December, 2017 he has been referring to the fact that the BRN's original patent has been and continues to be cited. The last reference I recall he said it had been cited more than 31 times. In addition BRN has a number of patent applications under consideration and as has been pointed out these are also being cited.
It is a very good sign that it is appearing to be the case that whenever someone is seeking to patent something using the term 'neural' or the like that BRN's patent/s is/are being cited.
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