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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, 2013. Plant and design patents are still classified solely within USPC at the USPTO. As of December 2018, patents at the USPTO are still routed to their appropriate business and art units by their USPC, even though it is no longer assigned directly to the patents themselves. Overview There are over 400 classes in the U.S. Patent Classification System, each having a title descriptive of its subject matter and each being identified by a class number. Each class is subdivided into a number of subclasses. Each subclass bears a descriptive title and is identified by a subclass number. The subclass number may be an integral number or may contain a decimal portion and/or alpha characters. A complete identification of a subclass requires both th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Patent Classification
A patent classification is a system for examiners of patent offices or other people to categorize (code) documents, such as published patent applications, 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 is applied for, 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. The International Patent Classification (IPC) is agreed internationally. The United States Patent Classification (USPC) is fixed by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). The Derwent classification system is fixed by an enterprise. The German Patent ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |