The World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) has recently completed its reform of the International Patent Classification (IPC) system. The reform was initiated in response to a need to adapt the existing IPC to make it a more efficient search tool and to adapt patent classification to the electronic age. The new (8th) edition of the IPC will enter into force on 1 January 2006.
The main feature of the new IPC is that it is a two-level classification system, comprising a stable "core" level and a dynamic "advanced" level. The core level is a subset of about 20,000 IPC headings, without any finely divided subgroups, which has been introduced to make it easier for less experienced or less specialised users to carry out searches. The advanced level comprises the entire set of IPC entries and will be continuously updated.
Documents classified in the advanced level will also be automatically allocated the corresponding core level classification. This means that a search in the core level will give complete results, whereas a search in the advanced level, although more precise, will only find documents classified according to the advanced level. It therefore seems advisable for any advanced level searches to be complemented by a search in the core level, since some patent offices will only classify documents according to the core level.
Under previous editions of the IPC classifiers have classified documents based on the content of their claims. This was fine when only granted patents were published, but now that most offices publish patent applications before they are examined, the content of the published claims may not reflect the true invention or all the material that might be relevant to a search. The new IPC therefore recommends that documents are classified not only by the content of their claims, but also by other important and possibly inventive aspects of the documents found in the description, examples or drawings. Other content in a document, which whilst of lesser importance may still have some search value, can be classified as 'additional information', as is the case under the current IPC.
Under the reformed IPC all documents published under an earlier version will be reclassified whenever a change affecting their classification is made to the IPC. As a result, it will be possible to search all documents using only the latest version of the IPC. In addition, the 'old' IPC (editions 1-7) classifications allocated to documents will be kept, in a separate field in most databases, so that users can search them independently of the 'new' IPC classifications.
The new IPC will also include sets of additional definitions, similar to those of the US Patent Classification system. These will be developed and incorporated by WIPO into the new IPC on a field-by-field basis.
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