Applicants for national or international IP protection are required to determine whether their creation is new or owned/claimed by someone else. To determine this, huge amounts of information must be searched. Four international classification systems facilitate and simplify IP searches. These classification systems organize a huge amount of information concerning inventions, trademarks, and industrial designs into indexed, manageable structures for easy retrieval:
- International Patent Classification (IPC)
- Nice Classification (for marks)
- Vienna Classification (for figurative elements of marks)
- Locarno Classification (for industrial designs)
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International Patent Classification (IPC)
The International Patent Classification (IPC), established by the Strasbourg Agreement 1971, provides for a hierarchical system of language independent symbols for the classification of patents and utility models according to the different areas of technology to which they pertain. The Classification is indispensable for retrieval of Patent documents in the search for “Prior Art”. Version 2015.01 of the IPC came into force on January 1, 2015.
The IPC is available in the following languages through the “bridge” function of the Internet publication: Chinese, Czech, Dutch, Estonian, German, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Portuguese (Brazil), Russian, Serbio, Slovak, Spanish. [/column]
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Locarno Classification
The Locarno Classification (LOC), established by the Locarno Agreement (1968), is an international classification used for the purposes of the registration of industrial designs. The tenth edition of the LOC came into force on January 1, 2014.
The Locarno Classification comprises:
- a list of classes and subclasses;
- an alphabetical list of goods which constitute industrial designs, with an indication of the classes and subclasses into which they fall;
- explanatory notes.
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Nice Classification
The Nice Classification (NCL), established by the Nice Agreement (1957), is an international classification of goods and services applied for the registration of marks. The 2015 version of the tenth edition of the NCL came into force on January 1, 2015. [/column]
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Vienna Classification
The Vienna Classification (VCL) is a hierarchical system that classifies the figurative elements of marks into categories, divisions and sections, on the basis of their shape. It was established by the Vienna Agreement in 1973. The seventh edition of the VCL came into force on January 1, 2013. [/column]
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Source: http://www.wipo.int/classifications/en/
