2.5 Searching for patent IPC class

2.5.1 The International Patent Classification System

The International Patent Classification system is a hierarchical classification system based mainly to classifying and search patent documents according to technical content of the document.

The classification system proceeds from the general to the particular details. For example:

A full list of terms classified according to the WIPO IPC system can be found on the WIPO website.

2.5.2 Searching for a patent using IPC Class

There are two ways to search by IPC documents:

• Select one or more IPC from the provided list by using the IPC Class field and select and enter the beginning of the IPC class. This will search the current version of IPC.

• Enter class description as a free form text for what you want to search by using the IPC Text field to conduct search in the same way as case Title searches, using AND, OR and AND NOT.  This will search all versions of IPC including expired versions.