The US Patent Classification System--(OR vs. XR Classes)

I’ll try to keep this post as short as possible, but the US Patent Classification System confounds even seasoned patent researchers, however it is very powerful, so it is worth a little ink.

 

I’ll break up this USPC primer into four shorter articles.

 

Call me a nerd, but I actually prefer the USPC to the International Patent Classification system (IPC) when searching US Patents—mainly because I am more familiar with the classes and titles, and frankly, we’ve developed some nice tools in CobaltIP to help you navigate the USPC.

The first thing to know is ALL US patents have what is called an “Original Class” or primary class.  The USPTO calls this class the “OR” class.  It is the class that best describes the inventive step of the patent.  It is double-vetted since the OR is also used for routing the application through the patent office.  If there is a mistake in OR classification, the examiner will reject the patent, and it will be reclassified and routed to a different examiner.  The OR class always appears in bold font and is found in first position on the front page the patent document.  Every US Patent Document has one and only one OR classification.

 

The name OR is confusing because it stands for “ORiginal.”   As we’ll discuss at length in a future article, patents are often reclassified during their lifetime, so it can be confusing with original vs. current classification.  We always use the term “OR” (as does the USPTO) to describe the first bold class.

 

You can think of the OR classification as representing the “main idea” of invention described in the patent.  The problem is that many inventions are composed of more than one idea, therefore the need for cross-reference classifications.

 

XR classifications are the other classifications that a US patent document may contain.  XR stands for “Cross-Reference.”  Get it?  The X means cross.  They are not required.  Some patents do not contain any XR classifications, while others have a dozen or more.  The classification department does not classify patents in XR classes—XR classes are up to the discretion of the examiner and his/her assistant examiner(s).  Consequently, while often valuable to the patent researcher, recognize that they are not consistently applied.

Sometimes you probably want to search by OR class only and sometimes you want to search by OR and XR Classes.  CobaltIP lets you do both.

 

If you use the Advanced Search form, CobaltIP will search for patents in both the OR and the XR classifications.  A search for class 345/173 (touch panels) will find 3,278 US Grants (Last20 date filter also applied).  The query sent to the search engine is this one:

 

CCL:(345/173)

 

CCL stands for “Current Classification” and will find documents classified in 345/173 by the OR or XR classifications. 

 

There is another query called PCCL, which stands for “Primary Current Classification.”  

 

PCCL:(345/173)

 

The PCCL query above finds 1,572 US Grants—all of whose OR classification is 345/173.

Want to find all patents classified by XR 345/173 and NOT OR 345/173?  In other words, find those patents in this touch panel class, but not classified as the primary inventive step (OR).  Run this query:

 

CCL:(345/173) NOT PCCL:(345/173)

 

The Boolean “NOT” excludes the patents in the OR class and only shows those in the XR.  It is interesting to take a look at these patents.  You'll quickly see that many of these patents are enabled by touch panels, but the touch panel itself is not the inventive step, such as user interface patents, housing and mounting, and something called “bodily actuated code generator” such as finger print recognition.

I think OR does a better and more accurate job for landscaping a technology, and for prioritizing your searches.  If you have to do a deep dive, you’ll need to use both types of classification searches.  If you do look in the XR classes, you can often exclude most of the XR patents by THEIR OR classes, which are clearly not going to be relevant to your search.  It is easy to do now that you know about the Boolean “NOT” operator.  A great patent searcher knows where to look for patents, but just as importantly, she knows where NOT to look!

 

CobaltIP gives you the power to query patents by either XR and OR classifications or by OR alone using different codes, CCL or PCCL.  It is easy to remember that the “P” means “primary,” and that it will find patents only in the OR classification.

I think this is the best place to start developing your use of CobaltIP’s Advanced Query Syntax, because you only have to change one letter (either use the P or not) and resubmit the query—and you can do it inside the “My Query” form field in the Refinement Panel.  The results are also unambiguous, so if you mess up your query syntax it will be easy to spot the error in the result set, and you can fix your query and try it again.

 

 

Finally, using OR and XR classes is only the first part of the story.  Querying the hierarchy is just as important.  I’ll cover that in the next article in this series.

 

So start practicing querying by OR and XR classes.  In about 5 minutes you’ll be querying XR and OR classes like a seasoned vet!

 

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