European patent classification

On January 1, 2013, was European Patent Classification (European classification system ECLA) by the Cooperative Patent Classification replaced (CPC).

The European Patent Classification was previously used internally by the European Patent Office (EPA) for the classification of document collections and as an aid in researching the state of the art. Their tree-like structure was a fine subdivision of the International Patent Classification (IPC). In the last version, the ECLA contained approx. 134,000 so-called symbols , while the IPC at that time only contained 70,000. As part of the examiners' work at the EPO, the ECLA was continuously developed and updated at shorter intervals (monthly) than the IPC.

A full ECLA symbol consisted of a sequence of letters and numbers and was specified as a data field in the EPO's internal document database. ECLA symbols could be researched via esp @ cenet .

example

A complete ECLA symbol using G06T11 / 00T as an example :

• G: Physics
  • G06: COMPUTING; CALCULATING; COUNTING
    • G06T: IMAGE DATA PROCESSING OR GENERATION, IN GENERAL
      • G06T11: Two dimensional (2D) image generation
        • G06T11 / 00T: Reconstruction from projection, eg tomography

harmonization

Most patent offices use their own classification systems in addition to the IPC. For this reason, the world's three largest organizations for intellectual property, the EPA, the US Patent and Trademark Office and the Japan Patent Office , are cooperating in a trilateral harmonization project with the aim of standardizing patent classification internationally. Thus, for example, the labor-intensive classification of US documents according to ECLA symbols would be eliminated.

swell

1. ^ Espacenet - Common Patent Classification (CPC). In: worldwide.espacenet.com. Retrieved July 15, 2016 . 
2. ^ The Website of the Trilateral Co-operation