Over Time, a New Patent Classification System

David Kappos, the Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and Director of the USPTO, the United States Patent and Trademark Office, and Benoit Battistelli, President of the EPO, the European Patent Office issued a joint statement that the two groups will work together to create a joint patent classification system in order to make the system more transparent and easier to search. Most of the major patent classification systems around the world, such as the one used by the EPO, are based on the International Patent Classification (IPC), which is administered by the UN agency, the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). However, the US patent system was developed well before the IPC, so it is necessarily different. The plan is for the new system to approximate the IPC, over time.