On February 19, 2019, a delegation of EAPO took part in the Sixth Cooperative Patent Classification (CPC) Annual Meeting with National Offices held in Geneva, Switzerland.

The meeting was jointly organized by the European Patent Office (EPO) and the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) for the offices classifying in accordance with the CPC, as well as those with observer status.

The organizers provided information on CPC implementation and development. Participants of the meeting were familiarized with the current changes in the schemes and definitions for 2018–2019, the new CPC tools, as well as the upcoming changes in the format of storage and display of national offices’ CPC data in the EPO databases.

Representatives of national IP offices of United Kingdom, Australia, Greece, Russia, Israel, Finland, Mexico, Brazil, Portugal, China, and the Republic of Korea made reports on the results of the CPC implementation and use.

In its report the EAPO delegation announced the CPC launch as an internal classification system, along with the International Patent Classification (IPC), at the Eurasian Patent Office on January 1, 2019 as regulated by the EAPO-EPO Memorandum of Understanding relating to the CPC, concluded in 2016.

The EAPO delegation made a presentation on the procedure for using the CPC for classifying front file Eurasian patent documents, the procedure for disseminating CPC data, as well as the EAPO implementation status, including modifications in the EAPO internal information systems, quality assessment of classified documents, training of examiners.