MPEP Section 903.06, Harmonized Subclasses

Executive summary:

This document contains Section 903.06 ("Harmonized Subclasses") of the Manual of Patent Examining Procedure (the "M.P.E.P."), Eighth Edition, Eighth Revision (July 2010). This page was last updated in January 2011. You may return to the section index to find a particular section. Alternatively, you may search the MPEP using the search box that appears on the left side of every page of BitLaw--you may restrict your search to the MPEP on the search results page.

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 [R-5]

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.<