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If a document was published under an earlier IPC edition (1 to 7) and there was no change in the scheme, will its new, reformed IPC be identical to its old IPC?
Not necessarily.
The reformed IPC classifications for documents published before 1 January 2006 will be derived from different sources, most of them from ECLA (see EPIDOS News 3/2004).
Since EPO examiners classify in ECLA independently of the IPC allocated to the document, the “old” and “new” IPC of a document may be different.
Due to the ECLA classification rules, which provide for more complete classification, many documents will have more “new” IPC symbols than “old” ones.