US Patent Classification Glossary -- An alphabetical list of the definitions of terms of art that appear within the body of the US Patent Classification system class definitions.
The US Patent Classification (USPC) system includes definitions of key terms relevant to the definition of the types of inventions included in the classification.
USPTO uses these words to define what the specific term means in the context of the classifications. These are terms of art — a term that has a specialized meaning in a particular chemical, electrical, or mechanical scientific or engineering domain. Within the current US Patent Classification system a word can have a different meaning depending on the area of invention that it resides in. There are three different definitions for the word "Active" — one that pertains to pharmacology and biology; one that relates to plant growth; and a third that deals with an "active database." There are five definitions of "Acylic", three for "Address Data"; five for "Alkali Metals."
Way Better Patents' data wizards pulled all of the definitions from all of the classes that had definitions and assembled them into one alphabetical collection. You can click the link and find the definition as it appears in the Class description.
The advantage of this presentation is that you can see what all three instances of the term "Address Data" mean and then click the link to the actual class definition of the one you think is most important to you and explore what it means. It also helps people new to researching patents understand the impact of how different terms are used within different domains. This becomes important when you are researching inventions where technology is converging - a medical device with a software component, or a smoke detecting cell phone for example.
The legend below will help you to navigate to the alphabetical list of terms.
| A | B | C-CL | CM-CZ | D-DIM | DIM-DZ | E | F | G | H | I | J-K | L | M-MET | MET-MZ | N | O | P-PHA | PHE-PON | POR-PZ | Q | R | S-SEPA | SEPO-SMT | SN-STEM | STEP-SZ | T-TOG | TON-TZ | U | V | W | X-Z |
Way Better Patents has a variety of patent information tools designed to make information about patents more accessible and easier to understand. From time to time we post updates on these tools here.
(So far we haven't heard anything about how these in situ (a patentesque word meaning in place) will be reflected in the nascent Cooperative Patent Classification system (CPC) but it's still good to understand the different meaning of different words when they are used within the definition of particular classes of art (groups of inventions) at USPTO.)
