On November 7, 2023, the European Patent Office (EPO) introduced an advanced Cooperative Patent Classification (CPC) text categorizer. Leveraging Artificial Intelligence (AI), the new text categorizer is designed to make it easier to find suitable terms within the CPC.
The new text categorizer supports text inputs in English, French, or German, and can return suitable CPC symbols in a fraction of a second.
The CPC system was developed over a decade ago by the EPO and USPTO and is used by thirty-eight national or regional patent offices. According to the EPO, “the majority of the patents published today are indexed onto this scheme, which has over 250,000 classifying symbols.”
The EPO is requesting that feedback on the new text categorizer be sent to cpc@epo.org.
Additional information about the CPC text categorizer is available here.
