Background on the Strasbourg Agreement concerning the International Classification of Patents (1971)
The Strasbourg Agreement establishes the International Patent Classification (IPC) system that divides inventions into eight categories with approximately 80,000 classification codes. Each group is represented by a symbol consisting of Arabic numerals and the letters of the Latin alphabet. Appropriate IPC symbols are indicated on patent documents (published patent applications and granted patents), of which more than 2 million patents are issued each year. The appropriate symbols are issued by the national industrial property office or patent-related document issuing authority. Patents [...]