Best Practices for Searching Non-Patent Literature

Christine Geluk (BIO)

Principal & Founder, Librarian At Your Service LLC

Patent Office examiners around the world search all types of prior art, not just patents, so there is a need to learn more about Non-Patent Literature (NPL) sources and how to search them.

Starting with the core definition of NPL (remember NPL is not just journal articles!), this session explores database choices patent information professionals have for their patentability search (aka prior art) checklist. While several types of databases will be covered, there will be an emphasis on publicly available databases. General search strategies on each database, and on several NPL types will be included. Specific examples will be shown that illustrates the database and NPL type search strategies.