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What are the changes for the patent information end-user?
Almost every patent information product will be affected, including esp@cenet ®, ESPACE® products, and INPADOC.
All national patent offices will adopt the new IPC, and their patent information products will have to be adapted as well. In addition, patent offices will also have to ensure that their examiners are able to use the new IPC when classifying.
For the occasional end-user, the changes will not be dramatic. The EPO is looking, for example, at solutions which will avoid the over-complication of classification search fields in esp@cenet ®.
Additional search fields, differentiating between IPC core level and advanced level, will appear in most databases.
Most significantly, searchers might notice that they get more hits than in the past, as patent offices progressively assign new IPC symbols to old documents.