If pursing a patent, non-patent literature in addition to patents in the USPTO and foreign patent databases should be searched in order to determine if an invention has already been disclosed.

• Some patents are cited in traditional journal literature
• These are keywords searches and not comprehensive
• Citations will include the patent number. See page - Finding the Full-Text of Patents - to retrieve the full-text using the patent number
• See the chart: Patent Coverage in Sci-Tech Databases
• See page - Searching U.S. Patents - for comprehensive patent research