The International Patent Classification (IPC), established by the Strasbourg Agreement in 1971, is a hierarchical system of language-independent symbols for the classification of patents and utility models according to the different areas of technology to which they pertain.
Administered by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), the IPC divides technology into eight sections with approximately 70,000 subdivisions. Each subdivision is assigned a symbol consisting of Arabic numerals and Latin letters. This classification system is used by over 100 countries and forms an integral part of the patent documents.
The main purposes of the IPC are to establish an effective search tool for retrieving patent documents, to facilitate the sharing of patent examination results between offices, to assist in the preparation of industrial property statistics, and to aid in technology analysis. It is updated every five years to incorporate developments in technology.
International Patent Classification (IPC) is a system used to classify patents and utility models according to the different technical fields to which they belong. It provides a standardized way to categorize inventions and technologies in a hierarchical manner, making it easier to search and retrieve patent information from different countries and patent offices.
The IPC is governed by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) and is regularly updated to accommodate advancements in technology and new areas of innovation. It consists of a series of codes and symbols that represent various technical fields, ranging from broad categories to more specific subcategories.
The IPC system is used internationally to classify patents and utility models during the patent application process. When an inventor or applicant files for a patent, they must provide a description of their invention and assign one or more IPC codes that best represent the subject matter of their invention.
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