The 5th Annual Meeting on Cooperative Patent Classification (CPC) took place in Geneva, Switzerland, on February 6, 2018.

About 50 participants from national IP offices classifying according to the CPC, as well as from offices with observer status, namely from the World Intellectual Property Organization, Canada, Argentina, Australia, Chili, took part in the meeting.

The current CPC geographical coverage and the latest statistics of the offices working with CPC were reflected during the work session. Separate aspects of the project realization, like changes in CPC related information systems and databases to be realized by EPO in the current and coming years, electronic products issued within the project frameworks and published with each new version of classification on the CPC web-site, educational content (presentations, video-materials, publications, interactive tutorial modules), which the EPO and the USPTO provide offices with for in-charge experts’ skills upgrade were reviewed.

Also matters on possible ways of communication to the EPO of data on classification, as well as formats of provision of such information and channels of communication were discussed.

The EAPO delegation made a short report on the CPC introduction in the Eurasian office. Representatives of different offices also presented the introduction of CPC in their respective offices, their current work and achievements of the previous years.

The meeting revealed the smooth development of the CPC classification process and the satisfaction of leading offices in use of the classification, its quality and efficiency in patent search.

The EAPO and EPO specialists discussed the current state of the art of the preliminary works towards classification of the Eurasian patent documents according to the CPC, the 2018 planned advanced trainings in different fields of technology for EAPO specialists, as well as the CPC Implementation Group meetings.

The Memorandum of Understanding between EAPO and EPO on CPC, signed in October 2016, serves the basis for EAPO-EPO cooperation in this field. Pursuant to this document, the Eurasian patent documents shall be classified in compliance with the CPC since January 1, 2019, and the backfile – since January 1, 2020.