Patent classification number

International patent classification is a general international patent literature classification. The classification number obtained by classifying patent documents (specifications) with the international patent classification table is called the international patent classification number, which is usually abbreviated as IPC number.

The International Patent Classification Table (IPC Classification) was compiled according to the Strasbourg Agreement on International Patent Classification signed in 197 1. It is the only international patent document classification and retrieval tool, and it is necessary for all countries in the world. In the past 30 years, IPC has made indelible contributions to the organization, management and retrieval of massive patent documents.

Due to the continuous emergence of new technologies, the number of patent documents increases by about 6.5438+0.5 million, or about 50 million. According to the calculation of 69,000 groups in the 7th edition, each group contains more than 700 documents on average. Moreover, the degree of scientific and technological development varies greatly from country to country and cannot adapt to the specific situation of each country. In addition, the establishment of IPC is based on the management and retrieval of paper patent documents. Today, with the rapid development of new technologies such as computers and communication networks, it shows some inadaptability.

In order to make IPC truly become an effective retrieval tool for patent offices and other users around the world to search patent documents when determining the novelty and creativity of patent applications, members of the IPC Union Congress and the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) reformed the international patent classification table 1999 in 2005, and divided the eighth edition of IPC into two levels: basic edition and advanced edition.

The eighth edition of IPC has about 20,000 articles, including departments, major categories, minor categories, major groups and a few groups in some technical fields. There are about 70,000 articles in the advanced version of the eighth edition of IPC, including the basic edition and the items further subdivided in the basic edition. Advanced version is used by industrial property offices and large industrial property offices with the lowest amount of PCT documents to classify a large number of patent documents.