What is a patent document?

Patent literature is the general name of official documents and publications produced by countries and international patent organizations that implement patent protection system in the process of patent examination and approval.

Introduction of patent literature

Patent documents are documents that record all kinds of relevant documents produced in the process of patent application, examination and approval. 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 literature is novel, extensive, systematic, detailed, practical, reliable, high-quality, fast publication, unified form, large number of repeated publications, special classification and retrieval methods, strict wording, limitations and general themes. According to the types of patents, patent documents are divided into three categories: invention patent specification, utility model patent specification and design patent document.

The Origin and Development of Patent Literature

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.

In the mid-1980s, the total number of patent specifications notified worldwide had reached 30 million. Most countries adopt the International Patent Classification (IPC) to classify patent documents and mark the IPC classification number. 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.