CHAPTER 20 For example, a researcher may have

explained invention in his thesis or

NPL Search
research paper(s) during his academic
What comprises non-patent literatures days.
(NPL)?
Other reason for NPL search is that these
Any literature/document, other than are easily available in the public domain.
patents, comes under this category of To give you an example, a patent is
prior-art. Some of the examples are publicly available once it is granted. Also,
mentioned below. Obviously, these are not it may take quite a long time to grant a
the full list of potential sources, but these patent. Hence, the disclosure of the patent
can give you an idea to where we can look might not be available prior to the date we
for such arts- are looking for.

1. Books Also, there are dedicated

2. Journals/Magazines journals/conferences for particular
3. Thesis/Academic papers technologies such as OSA (for optical
4. Research publications science), IEEE Journal of Solid-State
5. Conference papers Circuits (for solid state devices), etc. We
6. Project Reports can refer these sources depending on the
7. Standards publications (such as technology we are looking for.
IEEE 802.11, IEEE 802.16)
Where to look for NPLs?
8. User guides or manuals of any
product Major sources to find NPLs are as follows.
9. Blogs/Forums Again, these are not the complete list of
10. Sales and marketing materials potential sources.
11. News sites
12. Corporate social pages, press 1. Google / Google Scholar /Google
releases, etc Books
13. Videos/clips 2. IEEE xplore
3. Science Direct
4. ResearchGate
5. Hindawi
Why NPL search is important?
6. SPIE digital library
Since, NPL is a vast domain for prior-art, 7. Springer
there is a greater possibility of finding any 8. Reddit
relevant disclosure for required features,
How to search for NPLs?
and that too from multiple sources. Reason
being, the process of patent filing is very For searching the NPLs, firstly we have to
time consuming and costly, so people be familiar with the syntax used in
prefers for research papers, instead of different sources. After then, we can make
filing a patent. the search queries accordingly.
We can easily find the basic idea of any Here are some useful operators used in
invention in any thesis or research papers. Google/Google Scholar:
1. Quotes (“search term”) Search for X and Y. This will return only
results related to both X and Y. Note: It
Force an exact‐match search. Example: doesn’t really make much difference for
“steve jobs” regular searches, as Google defaults to
2. Wildcards “AND” anyway. But it’s very useful when
paired with other operators.
Wildcards can be added to a part of a
search term to search for several word Example: jobs AND gates
endings at the same time. The most 6. Group multiple terms or search
common wildcard is the asterisk (*), which operators to control how the
is used to replace 0 or more characters. search is executed.
Example: compar* will search for Example: (ipad OR iphone) apple
compare 7. AROUND(X)

comparing Proximity Search. Find pages containing

two words or phrases within X words of
comparison each other.
comparative, etc. Example: apple AROUND(4) iphone will
find pages containing the words “apple”
3. Wildcard (only *) within Quotes
and “iphone” within maximum four words
(“search term”)
apart.
This will return all phrases within the
How to retrieve NPL documents:
quotes with any number of additional
words between them. E.g. “Display * In most of the databases, we have to take
Screen” will capture “Display Screen” as the subscription to access the documents;
well as “Display Touch Screen”, “Display there are few sites through which we can
Touch Screen” and results mentioning it retrieve the documents free of cost. These
like are

“Wooden Easel Stand · Slat Wall Display 1. Sci-Hub

· Led Wall Screen · Led Video Screens ·” 2. DocDownloader

4. OR Note: We can paste the link or DOI of the

document to access its PDF.
Search for X or Y. This will return results
related to X or Y, or both. Note: The pipe Challenges in NPL search
(|) operator can also be used in place of
“OR.” The biggest challenge is to confirm the
date of the literature, because in many
Examples: jobs OR gates / jobs | gates cases, the date is not mentioned in the
document.
5. AND
Solution:
1. Check the same document in the
multiple sources, including the
foreword citations of the document.
2. Search in web archive
(https://archive.org/)
Assignments 5. If I search “Play AROUND(5)
Football” in Google, what types of
1. What types of NPLs among the results among the following can I
following can be retrieved from expect? (hypothetical examples)
Google Scholar?
a. Yesterday, I played football after
a. Patents very long time.
b. Research Papers/ Thesis b. Football is played in most of the
c. Books European countries.
d. All of the above c. I love to play football in the
evening.
d. All of the above
2. Will Google show any result, if the
searched keyword is in the URL of
that page? 6. In how many ways, we can search
any research paper?
a. Yes
b. No a. Through DOI
b. Document Title
c. Author Name
d. All of the above
3. What is the publication date of
paper “Aide de Camp: Asymmetric
Dual Core Design for Power and 7. By searching in which of the fields
Energy Reduction”? in IEEE xplore, there is a chance of
getting better results?
a. July, 2004
b. May, 2003 a. Metadata Only
c. Jan, 2003 b. Full Text & Metadata
d. June 2003 c. Document Title
a. All of the above

4. Which among the following dates

should be considered for an NPL to 8. Which among the following is the
act as prior-art? search engine for NPL?

a. Date of Conference in which the a. Google Scholar

paper is published b. Science Direct
b. Date on which the NPL is added to c. Patbase
digital library d. Both A and B
c. Whichever among A OR B is e. A, B and C
earlier
d. Whichever among A OR B is later
9. Can any TV series or movie be
used as a prior-art? (Hint: Read this
article)
a. Yes
b. No
c. Can’t say

10. Confirm which product’s user

guide was added on 2017-12-19,
(hint - https://www.dji.com)

a. Phantom 2 Vision
b. Mavic Pro User Guide
c. Phantom 4
d. None of the above

11. Identify the publication date of

research paper -A New Power
Management IC Architecture for
Envelope Tracking Power
Amplifier (hint-
http://mmic.cafe24.com/Homepage
/publications/paper/int_journal/201
1_JChoi_MTT.pdf)

a. 05 May 2011
b. 7, July 2011
c. 17 March 2011
d. None of the above

12. What information is required for

downloading PDF of "A highly-
applicable supply modulator with a
highly-linear envelope detector for
WCDMA envelope-tracking
applications" PDF from sci-hub

a. DOI
b. Title
c. Author Name
a. Any of the above