The patent literature refers to the official publications known publicly of the patent office of each country, and It may be published in paper or electronic format.
Literature search like novelty and validity or invalidity search might include patent documents. Note that novelty searches are obtained for the purpose of filing a patent application, while validity/invalidity searches are obtained to check the validity of a patent or patent application.
prior art search of patent literature including patent specification, monographs, patent gazettes, brochures, patent abstracts, progress reports, patent index, patent classification tables, catalogues, dictionaries, encyclopaedias, etc.
