This document discusses and compares patent and non-patent literature as sources of information for research. It provides examples of various types of non-patent literature including academic journals, books, conference papers, and technical reports. It also lists several online databases and search engines that provide access to non-patent literature, patents, and other sources. The document notes that while patent and non-patent literature differ in their purposes and disclosure styles, they also have similarities and can provide complementary information for researchers. It emphasizes searching both sources for the most comprehensive information.

1. Access to and Searching Non-Patent
Literature:
On-Line Scientific and Technical
Journals
Stanley Kowalski
Franklin Pierce Law Center

2. With the emergence of a knowledge
based economy, more and more
research teams, academic or industrial,
produce results which can be both
published in academic journals and
patented.

3. Non-Patent Literature
 Scientific journals articles
 Book chapters
 Conference papers

4. Non
Patent
Literature
(NPL)
Academic
Journals
Books
Monographs
Trade
Journals
Conference
Proceedings
Thesis
Technical
Reports
Encyclopedias
Dictionary
Non Patent
Literature
Sources

5. Journals
Books, Thesis,
Technical
reports,
Monographs
Standards
Conference
Proceedings
Company
Disclosures
Secondary Publishers
INSPEC, CAS,
COMPDX, BIOSIS,
MEDLINE, FSTA
Encyclopedia
Dictionaries
Non Patent
Literature
Sources

6. Patent Literature Databases
Search Engine
or Database
Access Link Searches Provided Full Text vs.
Abstracts
Patent Lens Public www.patentlens.net/daisy/patentlens/patentlens.html Full text of over 8 million patents
and applications. Updated weekly
with information from WIPO,
USPTO, EPO and IP Australia.
Can view in full
text mode or PDF
mode.
United States
Patent &
Trademark
Office (Patents)
Public http://www.uspto.gov/patft/index.html Searches US Patents and
Published Patent Applications.
Full text, image is
problematic. No
PDF.
Google Patents Public http://www.google.com/patents Free database covering the entire
collection of patents made
available by the USPTO.
Abstracts, full text
and PDF.
Scirus Public http://scirus.com/ Approx. 450 million scientific
items.
Abstracts, full text
and PDF when
available.
Patent Storm Public http://www.patentstorm.us/ U. S. Patents
Patent Applications
Abstracts, full text
and PDF
(clickable
features)

7. Non Patent Literature Database
Search Engine or Database Access Link Searches Provided Full Text
vs.
Abstracts
PubMed Central (PMC) Public http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/ Free access archive of
complete collection of
biomedical and life sciences
journal articles from NIH’s
National Center for
Biotechnology information.
Abstracts and links
to full text when
available.
PubMed/ Medline Public http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez Free access archive of
biomedical literature and is
also useful when search
topic may be more general
science or chemistry.
Abstracts and links
to full text when
available.
Medline Plus Public http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ Contains carefully selected
links to web resources with
health information on > 740
topics and > 1350
organizations.
Abstracts and links
to full text when
available.

8. Non Patent Literature Database
Search Engine or
Database
Access Link Searches Provided Full Text
vs.
Abstracts
MeSH – Medical
Subject Headings
Public http://www.nlm.nih.gov/mesh/meshhome.html A listing of U S National Library
of Medicine’s controlled
vocabulary for indexing articles
for MEDLINE/PubMed.
When available
Google Scholar Public http://scholar.google.com/ Free database for broad search
for scholarly publications.
Abstracts and links to
full text when available
NTIS (National
Technical
Information Service)
Public http://ntis.gov/ Largest central resource for
government-funded scientific,
technical, engineering,
biotechnology, the environment,
health & safety, and business
related information.
Seems to provide
abstracts only.
TESS – Trademark
electronic search
system
Public http://www.uspto.gov/main/trademarks.htm TESS contains more than 4
million pending, registered and
dead federal trademarks.
N/A

9. Publications and patents as information supports have
many analogous features for example:
 author/inventor
 institution/assignee
 bibliographic referencing/patent system referencing
 bibliometric classification/official classification
 abstract
 full text
 reference to scientific literature/reference to patent
or non-patent literature, etc.

10. For Example, note the
congruence of inventors and
authors, and published and
patented technologies in the
following example of HIV
vaccine technology:

11. DNA Vaccination with the Human Immunodeficiency Virus
Type 1 SF162DV2 Envelope Elicits Immune Responses
That Offer Partial Protection from Simian/Human
Immunodeficiency Virus Infection to CD81 T-Cell-Depleted
Rhesus Macaques
JOURNAL OF VIROLOGY, Feb. 2001, p. 1547–1550
S. CHERPELIS,1 I. SHRIVASTAVA,2 A. GETTIE,1,3 X. JIN,1 D. D. HO,1
S. W. BARNETT,2 AND L. STAMATATOS1*

13. Note the congruence between
assignee/institution and
inventor/author and technology
covered in the following journal
publication and patent:

14. Plant Physiology, October 1999, Vol. 121, pp. 453–460,
www.plantphysiol.org
Glucose Polyester Biosynthesis.
Purification and Characterization of a Glucose
Acyltransferase
Alice X. Li, Nancy Eannetta, Gurdev S.
Ghangas, and John C. Steffens
Department of Plant Breeding, Cornell
University, Ithaca, New York 14853

16. However, there are
important caveats!

17. Patent information may not
always be used as source for
scientific technical information;
in addition information disclosed
in patents does not always
appear in non-patent literature
later.

18. Methods and results published in academic
journals must be informative enough firstly to
convince referees, secondly to attract a large scope of
potential users and citers as soon as possible.
A patent, however, is both a legal document and a
piece of technical literature. This shapes well known
peculiarities of patent documents; for example, poorly
informative original titles.

19. Publications are a good
representation of the contents of
science.
Patents (or kindred IPR forms) collect
a large part of technological
information, even though the patent
combines several functions.

20. One can generally expect,
therefore, different patterns of
information disclosure in
scientific publications and
patents.

21. Therefore, these two sources of
information are neither exclusive nor
inclusive, but rather complimentary.
When doing research, it is important to
research both patent and non-patent
literature, regardless of the intent, i.e.,
whether for prior art searching, freedom
to operate analysis or patent invalidation
research.

22. Some examples of web-based
non-patent literature
resources

23. Non-Patent Literature (examples)
Publishers’ own websites:
Found through PubMed, LinkOut or through
direct searching;
British Library
http://www.bl.uk/services/document/dsc.html;
CAS Document Detective Service
http://www.cas.org/Support/dds.html

24. Non-Patent Literature (examples)
Purdue Univ. Tech. Info Service
http://www.tis.purdue.edu/html/index.html
U. Minn. Biomedical Info. Service
http://www.biomed.lib.umn.edu/bis/bismain.html
A research university library near you!

25. Internet Resources (examples)
 Meta Search Engines
- Google Scholar:
http://scholar.google.com/
- Scirus: http://www.scirus.com
- Entrez:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/Entrez
 Citation Tracking
 Digital Object Identifier (DOI)

26. However, it is crucial to remember
that current search engines may still
largely ignore the contents of the
Library of Congress, the US Patent
and Trademark database, newspaper
archives, and many other valuable
sources of information because their
contents are not “crawlable”.

27. Until recently, the multidisciplinary data
sources for patents and publications were
separated. The trend today is towards an
integration of knowledge information
whatever the nature. A new sign perhaps is
the connection between ISI publications
and Derwent patents by navigation along
the citation linkages. The navigation
between documents along a lexical
connection is also likely to expand.

28. Patent and non-patent literature
are different but also
complimentary. Searching both will
inform as to the technologies
considered, the inventors and their
respective assignees.

29. Robert J. W. Tijssen Handbook of Quantitative Science and
Technology Research, 695-715
Patent and Literature Search Tools (rev. April 2008) JHU
Jeffrey J. Berns AALL Annual Meeting and Conference, 2005 San
Antonic
CGIAR Centre publications as Prior art
Elise Bassecoulard Handbook of Quantitative Science and
Technology Research, 665-694
Mervyn Bregonje World Patent Information; Dec 2005, Vol. 27 Issue
4, p309-315, 7p
European Patent Office, The Hague Search Matters 2009
References used for this presentation