米国 先行技術としての書籍

Just a patent examinerに興味深い記事がありましたので紹介します。このような障害があるので米国のオフィスアクションでは書籍があまり引用されないのでしょう。裏返せば、特許無効化のための調査において特許以外の文献が宝の山かもしれません。

＜抜粋＞
This is not to say that there's not likely some good prior art out there in book form. The hard-copy paper-and-binding medium presents some serious problems for examiners .
The biggest problem is identifying useful prior art in books in the first place.
The examiner then has to find out if the library has got a copy of the book. If not, they can file a request for an inter-library loan (takes about a week or so).
the examiner then needs to read the thing, or at least skim it well enough to determine if it is useful as prior art.
Then, if it is useful, the examiner has to take the time to photocopy the relevant parts of the book, or sometimes the entire thing.
This is truly mind-numbing work, believe me.
Before the advent of electronic Office actions, the examiner would be done at this point, but today they need to take the additional step of scanning the photocopied book to create a pdf version.
Since examiners are given a limited amount of time to perform their examination, taking the extra time to pursue prior art in book form is not a very attractive option.
This is one reason why attorneys might not see books used as prior art all that often.