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Non-patent literature (NPL) encompasses a wide variety of diverse published materials, such as textbooks, newspaper articles, magazine articles, sales brochures, professional journals, and conference proceedings. A patent examiner can find patented art in the U.S. Patent database for many business technologies. However, for rapidly emerging technologies, and/or simple accounting procedures, the U.S. Patent database is of less value. The Class 705 examiner will rely on NPL to provide the relevant art in these situations.

Begun in 1994, the EIC of Technology Center 2700 has worked hard to more readily provide NPL to the examiner. To assist the patent examiner in finding relevant NPL, the USPTO provides access to scientific and business related articles in over 900 databases through two commercial NPL database providers –

DIALOG ®
STN/CAS ®

All Class 705 examiners receive training in one or more of these two commercial database providers. The training is taught in two parts. The first part is an orientation into how the database operates, and how to establish a simple search query. The second part of the course is hands on with specific examples related to the business arts.