U.S. utility patents and U.S. utility patent application publications published after December 31, 2014, do not receive a designated U.S. patent classification. U.S. design and plant patents and U.S. plant patent application publications receive a designated U.S. patent classification. Current classification information for U.S. patents is available from the sources indicated below.

The Office of Patent Classification Home Page address on the internet is www.uspto.gov/Classification. The site is the clearinghouse for classification information. The site includes the following: (A) links to the Cooperative Patent Classification (CPC) system; (B) United States Classification (USPC) system resources including class definitions, the USPC index, and the Handbook for Classification; and (C) additional classification resources related to international classification.

The address for the Patent Classification Home Page on the USPTO intranet is https://ptoweb.uspto.gov/ patents/classification-resources/. The Classification Home Page is also accessible from the desktop via the Patent Examiner’s Toolkit. The site is the clearinghouse for classification information by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). Examiners and the public are provided with access to identical information for the Index, schedules, and definitions.

The Intranet Classification Home Page site also includes links to international information such as CPC schedules, IPC Concordance, IPC Schedules, IPC Catchword Index, WIPO Handbook on Industrial Property Information and Documentation, and to national (U.S.) information such as Overview of the Classification System, Classification Guides and Bulletins, and the Patent Classification Search Page.

The automated search tool on examiners’ desktop computers is the Patents End-to-End (PE2E) Search tool (SEARCH). PE2E SEARCH provides examiners with access to the: (A) full text of U.S. published applications since 2001; (B) full text of U.S. patents granted since 1970; and (C) optically scanned full text of U.S. patents granted 1920-1970. Additionally, PE2E SEARCH provides current classification information and images for all U.S. published applications and patents. Images are available for foreign patent documents, and English language abstracts are available for many foreign patent documents published since 1978 using PE2E SEARCH. Specific instructions for gaining access to the various documents can be found on the PE2E SEARCH webpage on the intranet, available on examiners’ desktop computers.

The Patent Public Search tool (PPUBS) is available at www.uspto.gov/PatentPublicSearch.