A patent classification is a system for

examiner Examiner or The Examiner may refer to: Occupations * Bank examiner, a kind of auditor * Examiner (Roman Catholicism), a type of office in the Roman Catholic Church * Examinership, a concept in Irish law * Medical examiner * Patent examiner * ...

s of

patent office A patent office is a governmental or intergovernmental organization which controls the issue of patents. In other words, "patent offices are government bodies that may grant a patent or reject the patent application based on whether the applicati ...

s or other people to categorize (code) documents, such as published

patent application A patent application is a request pending at a patent office for the grant of a patent for an invention described in the patent specification and a set of one or more claim (patent), claims stated in a formal document, including necessary officia ...

s, according to the technical features of their content. Patent classifications make it feasible to search quickly for documents about earlier disclosures similar to or related to the invention for which a

patent A patent is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the legal right to exclude others from making, using, or selling an invention for a limited period of time in exchange for publishing an sufficiency of disclosure, enabling discl ...

is applied, and to track technological trends in patent applications. Searches based on patent classifications can identify documents of different languages by using the codes (classes) of the system, rather than words. Patent classification systems were originally developed for sorting paper documents, but are nowadays used for searching patent databases.

Main classification schemes

The

International Patent Classification The International Patent Classification (IPC) is a hierarchical patent classification system used in over 100 countries to classify the content of patents in a uniform manner. It was created under the Strasbourg Agreement (1971), one of a number of ...

(IPC) is agreed upon internationally. The

United States Patent Classification The United States Patent Classification is an official patent classification system in use and maintained by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). It was mostly replaced by the Cooperative Patent Classification (CPC) on January 1, ...

(USPC) is fixed by the

United States Patent and Trademark Office The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) is an List of federal agencies in the United States, agency in the United States Department of Commerce, U.S. Department of Commerce that serves as the national patent office and trademark ...

(USPTO). An enterprise fixed the Derwent classification system. The German Patent Classification (DPK) was fixed by the

German Patent Office The German Patent and Trade Mark Office (; abbreviation: DPMA) is the German national patent office, with headquarters in Munich, and offices in Berlin and Jena. In 2006 it employed 2556 people, of which about 700 were patent examiners. Function ...

(''Deutsches Patentamt''). In October 2010, the

European Patent Office The European Patent Office (EPO) is one of the two organs of the European Patent Organisation (EPOrg), the other being the Administrative Council. The EPO acts as executive body for the organisation

(EPO) and USPTO launched a joint project to create the Cooperative Patent Classification (CPC) to harmonise the patent classifications systems between the two offices. From 2013, CPC replaced the European Classification (ECLA), which was based on the IPC but adapted by the EPO.

Class Schedule Classification

The United States Patent and Trademark Office index patents b
class
and subclasses.

United States Classification (USPC) system

After implementing the Cooperative Patent Classification (CPC), only th
plant
and design classification material is updated within the USPC.

External links

Korea Intellectual Property Rights Information Service

United Kingdom Patent Classification Overview

Russia Office of Patent Classification
Федеральная служба по интеллектуальной собственности (Роспатент)

by the

British Library The British Library is the national library of the United Kingdom. Based in London, it is one of the largest libraries in the world, with an estimated collection of between 170 and 200 million items from multiple countries. As a legal deposit li ...

(archived page)
Cooperative Patent Classification
(CPC) {{law-stub

Main classification schemes

Class Schedule Classification

United States Classification (USPC) system

See also

External links