Glossary Term – Prime Innovation

What It Means

Patent classification is the hierarchical system used by patent offices to organise inventions into defined technical categories. Each patent is assigned classification codes based on its technical features. The two main systems are the International Patent Classification (IPC) and the Cooperative Patent Classification (CPC). These codes act like a technical indexing system, helping patent examiners and analysts find relevant patents more accurately.

Why It Matters

Understanding what kind of technology a patent covers:

Improves search accuracy

Keyword searches can miss critical documents or retrieve irrelevant ones. Classification codes allow you to search by technical function, making prior art, freedom-to-operate, and landscape searches far more reliable.

Reveals competitor positioning

By analysing which classifications competitors are filing in, you can see where they are investing technologically. This provides insight into R&D direction, market focus, and emerging technology clusters - valuable for investors and strategic planning.

Enables landscape analysis of technical areas

Classification codes allow you to map entire technology fields, not just individual patents. By analysing activity within specific CPC or IPC subclasses, you can see where innovation is accelerating, where filing density is increasing, and which technical niches are underdeveloped - enabling clearer R&D direction, smarter investment decisions, and more informed competitive positioning.

Real-world Example

A start-up developing a system to recover high-value noble gases (e.g. xenon or krypton) from industrial waste gas streams wants to understand who else operates in this space. Initial keyword searches such as “noble gas purification” return thousands of broadly relevant patent results, making meaningful review impractical. By analysing CPC classifications, the company identifies specific subclasses covering noble gas recovery and separation systems and methods.

Pro Tip

Don’t rely on keywords alone. When conducting searches or analysing competitors, identify the primary IPC or CPC classifications and limit the search to these - they reveal the true technical neighbourhood of your technology of interest.