Patent literature in a narrow sense refers to

Patent documents in a narrow sense refer to patent application specifications including patent claims, specifications, claims and abstracts, as well as documents of recognized patent specifications.

Patent documents in a narrow sense refer to patent application specifications including patent claims, specifications, claims and abstracts, as well as documents and materials of recognized patent specifications. Patent literature in a broad sense also includes patent bulletins, patent abstracts, various search indexes and reference books. Patent literature is a kind of literature that integrates technical, economic and legal information. Its carrier forms are generally paper, microfilm, magnetic tape, optical disk and so on.

Patent documents can be divided into two categories: patent application disclosure instructions and patent authorization announcement instructions. Patent literature retrieval can be carried out in the following ways: patent retrieval, avoiding infringement retrieval, patent status retrieval, technology prediction retrieval and specific technical scheme retrieval. According to the types of patents, patent documents are divided into three categories: invention patent specification, utility model patent specification and design patent document.

Source of patent documents:

Patent literature is the product of patent system. Patent system is a system in which the government examines and publishes the contents of inventions, protects the ownership of inventions by legal and economic means, and promotes the progress of science and technology and the development of productive forces. The earliest patent system in the world was established in Venice, which approved the first recorded patent on February 20th, 2006. From the end of 17 to the beginning of 18, western countries successively promulgated patent laws. /kloc-In the second half of the 20th century, international patent organizations appeared and various international treaties and agreements were concluded.

The World Patent Digest and World Patent Index published by derwent Company in Britain report more than 600,000 patents in English every year, which are important retrieval tools for patent documents. China's patent law has also formed its own patent literature system since it was implemented in April of 1985 and 1, which is mainly composed of invention patent bulletin, utility model patent bulletin, design patent bulletin and patent specifications corresponding to the former two.