Nonpatent

The United States Patent Office classified search files currently consist of about 18 million United States patent documents, about 12 million foreign patent documents, and about 2 million documents of nonpatent literature.

NPR is a simple count of the number of references in a patent application to a wide variety of nonpatent publications, including scientific papers and articles, brochures, books, standards, documents, patent disclosure bulletins, and so on.

The exclusivity period of a product on the market can also be extended through nonpatent exclusivities.