German Patent Classification

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The German Patent Classification is a patent classification system that was used in several European countries.

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.

Contents

History

The German Patent Office (German: Kaiserliches Patentamt) started developing a classification system for its patent documents in 1877. [1] It was greatly expanded during the following decades and was published in seven editions between 1906 and 1958, first as "Verzeichnis der deutschen Patentklassen" and later as "Gruppeneinteilung der Patentklassen". The abbreviation DPK, for Deutsche Patentklassifikation, is used in some databases.

German language West Germanic language

German is a West Germanic language that is mainly spoken in Central Europe. It is the most widely spoken and official or co-official language in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, South Tyrol (Italy), the German-speaking Community of Belgium, and Liechtenstein. It is also one of the three official languages of Luxembourg and a co-official language in the Opole Voivodeship in Poland. The languages which are most similar to German are the other members of the West Germanic language branch: Afrikaans, Dutch, English, the Frisian languages, Low German/Low Saxon, Luxembourgish, and Yiddish. There are also strong similarities in vocabulary with Danish, Norwegian and Swedish, although those belong to the North Germanic group. German is the second most widely spoken Germanic language, after English.

The DPK was also used in Sweden, Norway, and other countries in Scandinavia and central and eastern Europe. In the 1970s, development and active use of the system publications was discontinued as most of these countries switched to the International Patent Classification (IPC). The classification is still used on old patent documents.

The International Patent Classification (IPC) is a hierarchical patent classification system used in over 100 countries to classify the content of patents in a uniform manner. It was created under the Strasbourg Agreement (1971), one of a number of treaties administered by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). The classification is updated on a regular basis by a Committee of Experts, consisting of representatives of the Contracting States of that Agreement with observers from other organisations, such as the European Patent Office.

Between the editions, modifications were published in the form of "Änderungen" (German for "modifications") and "Ergänzungslieferungen" (German for "updates"). Between 1958 and 1975 around 40 percent of the original groups were replaced with groups from the emerging IPC. These new IPC-based parts mainly used the IPC group numbering, but kept the original DPK subclass symbols.

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The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to patents:

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References

  1. Introduction to the German Patent Classification (DPK) at the Swedish Patent and Trademark Office (PRV)