Unlike scientific papers, patent application should be specifically formulated.

For patent application Background and Literature review are referred as Field and Prior Art. A practical advice for a beginner will be just taking a look at some issued patents structure and formation for acquiring the basic techniques of writing.

Often, Field section will have a sentence with generalized formation as follows: "The present invention relates generally to .......................................(taken from the general IPC* description) More particularly, the present invention relates to .................................................... (taken from the specific IPC description)."

While for Prior Art you ought to describe at least the closest three analogues or inventions to your invention.

Popular mistakes may be:

1) Lack of familiarity with IPC.

2) Insufficient patent research for analogues.

3) Imprecise description of the analogues.

Best luck!

* International Patent Classification (IPC)

The following papers may further help, particularly: writing a patent in 26 steps, with criteria for/causes of success/failure (see: Reis and Reis, 2013).

• Donald, K. E., Mohibul Kabir, K. M. and Donald, W. A. (2018) Tips for reading patents: a concise introduction for scientists, Expert Opinion On Therapeutic Patents, 28, 4, pp. 277-280.
• Reis, S. R. N. and Reis, A. I. (2013) How to write your first patent, In: Proceedings of the 3rd Interdisciplinary Engineering Design Education Conference : IEDEC 2013, March 4-5, 2013, Santa Clara, California USA. Piscataway, NJ: IEEE, pp. 187-193.

Prior art is definitely not the important part of it.... You should just avoid any statement having a logical link to your invention... I mean something obviously leading to your claimed invention. On contrary, in the background section, you should insist on differences and unsolved problems (at least in Europe). It should definitely not be comparable to a scientific bibliographical review.

In my opinion, only the closest prior art with one or two related prior art should be cited.

Some Authors sometimes tries to give so many references that the pertinent one are buried in the noise of not pertinent one.

Usually, the way I draft in mechanics and related matters (electricity, physics,...) is

If you want to have example... read granted patents (B1, B2, B3 publications, no international applications): in major countries, they have been examined and their scope are normally well defined and the wording have normally been corrected by examiner....