MPEP Section 903.06, Harmonized Subclasses

Executive summary:

This document contains one section of the Manual of Patent Examining Procedure (the "M.P.E.P."), Eighth Edition, Fifth Revision (August 2006). This page was last updated in July 2007. You may return to the section index to find a particular section. Alternatively, you may search the MPEP use the search box that appears on the bottom of every page of BitLaw--be sure to restrict your search to the MPEP in the pop-up list.

For more information on patent law, please see the Patent Section of BitLaw. For patent services, see the Beck & Tysver pages.

Previous Section (§903.05) | Next Section (§903.07)

903.06 Harmonized Subclasses

The U.S. Patent Classification System (USPC) includes subclasses that have been harmonized with subclasses from the European Patent Office (EPO) and the Japan Patent Office (JPO). These subclasses are regularly populated with documents from the EPO and JPO databases. Subclasses that have been harmonized have a designation of "EPO," "JPO," or "EPO/JPO" in parentheses following the subclass title to indicate if the subclass has been harmonized with the EPO or JPO or with both systems.<