A few days ago the Historical Document Dept. of the SIPO smoothly completed, with half a month of painstaking efforts and in high quality, the revision of the International Property Classification (edition of 2007.01) (IPC). The revised IPC took effect on January 1, 2007, and has, up to date, operated in a normal way without feedback of any information about its errors.

After the initial use of the high-class edition of IPC from January 1, 2007, the WIPO made revisions on some subclasses of the IPC, which involve two technical areas: making chemicals harmless (A62D3/00) and electric power transfer devices (HO2M). 　
　　
At present, human society has increasing higher requirements for a clean environment. Based on the rapid development of technologies of treating poisonous and harmful substances and in view of the growing amount of patent applications, the current revision has made sub-classification under group A62D3/00 and added some subgroups and indexing codes, so that the methods of treating poisonous and harmful substances are classified more in detail. In the subclass HO2M, some subgroups of transfer devices of special variety are added. 
　
After learning about the revision of the IPC, the Research Division of the Historical Document Dept. timely unloaded the contents of revision and the IPC (English version of the 2007.01 edition), organized reviwers in the related areas to translate and proofread the revised parts, and transmitted at the first time the information on IPC revision to the Business Coordination Division of the Review Business Department, for the latter to take care of the follow-up coordination work with other departments concerned. At the same time, people of the Historical Document Dept. analyzed the revised contents and produced revised data of the sub-classification system (C3), and called a business coordination meeting on the revision of IPC (2007.01 edition). At the meeting departments discussed the related work and studied problems regarding the process and revision of its 8th edition, with a clear division of labor among them. After meeting, the Research Division of the Historical Document Dept., as required, timely relayed the Chinese text of information on IPC revision and replied to questions put up by departments.

2007-01-25

2007-01-25