For many mechanical cases, the gist of the invention is shown in a single drawing. Flipping though a pile of moldering drawings is faster than downloading image files over a broadband modem, so it will be a few years before the folks doing physical searches need to worry about their jobs disappearing. For software-related inventions, I think the best search is usually done on a database. The classification system of a technology necessarily changes as the technology grows, and many of these changes initially create overlapping and ambiguous classifications. Moreover, the examining staff assigned to fast growing cutting-edge areas tends to be inexperienced and less able to help a searcher who stops by to ask which classes should be searched.
Many software patents lack unique and characteristic drawings.
This forces one to use a text-based search strategy, which is best carried out on a database. Many times the most significant software prior art is to be found in the general technical literature, and not in patents. All rights reserved Home ABCs of Patents Practical Secrecy Provisional Appl.