Cooperative Patent Classification

Cooperative Patent Classification (CPC)

In 2010, the European Patent Office (EPO) and the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) signed a joint agreement to develop a common classification scheme. This new classification system is known as the Cooperative Patent Classification (CPC) and is similar in structure to the International Patent Classification (IPC).

The CPC is a harmonization effort between the European classification (ECLA) and US classification systems, although initially based on ECLA. The CPC will be adopted globally by over 45 patent offices and will ultimately provide improved prior art searching for patent examiners and for patent searchers.

The EPO and USPTO both have highly developed patent classification systems. CPC is an ambitious harmonization effort to bring the best practices from each Office together. In fact, most U.S. patent documents are already classified in ECLA. The conversion from ECLA to CPC at the EPO will ensure IPC compliance and eliminate the need for the EPO to classify U.S. patent documents. At the USPTO, the conversion will provide an up-to date classification system that is internationally compatible.

The launch of the CPC was scheduled for 1 January 2013.

Objectives of the Cooperative Patent Classification

Improving patent searching

The Cooperative Patent Classification (CPC) is a joint endeavour of the European Patent Office (EPO) and the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) to harmonize their classification systems (ECLA and USPC respectively) into a single system having a similar structure to the International Patent Classification (IPC) administered by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), a specialized agency of the United Nations, and is the only patent classification system used by all patent offices. The jointly developed classification system will be more detailed than the IPC to improve patent searching.
Sharing resources

By having a joint classification system between the EPO and the USPTO, the maintenance of the scheme will also be collaborative. In this way resources will be shared in order to classify documents, to revise the scheme when necessary and to subsequently reclassify documents.

More information about the Cooperative Patent Classification system and its development, guidelines about its use, and class definitions can be found at the CPC Website.

Conclusion

Notes

See Also

References and Further Reading

About the Author/s and Reviewer/s

Author: international

Mentioned in these Entries

Classification for Law Libraries, Classification schemes in the UK, Law Classification, Historical, Right in Rem, Historical.


Posted

in

, , ,

by

Tags:

Comments

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *