3.1 Drawing up the search report 

Once it has ended its search, the search division selects the documents to be cited in the search report from among those it has found. These always include the most relevant ones (which will be specially labelled in the report, see B‑X, 9.2.1). Less relevant documents are only cited when they concern aspects or details of the claimed invention not found in the documents already selected for citation. If there is some doubt about novelty or inventive step, the search division will cite rather more readily to enable the examining division to consider the matter more fully (see B‑III, 1.1).

The search division does not cite more documents than necessary in the search report and so, if there are several equally relevant documents, it normally cites only one of them. The search report is anyway accompanied by an automatically generated annex listing the available patent documents belonging to the same patent family. When selecting which of these documents to cite, the search division should think about what language is the most convenient, and should preferably cite (or at least note) documents in the same language as the application (see B‑X, 9.1.2).