This day in the history of IP in Belarus: 25 years ago Belarus joined the Strasbourg Agreement on International Patent Classification

25 years ago, on March 12, 1999, Edict of the President of the Republic of Belarus No. 674 of December 31, 1997 «On the Accession of the Republic of Belarus to the Nice Agreement Concerning the International Classification of Goods and Services for the Registration of Marks, the Strasbourg Agreement Concerning the International Patent Classification, the Locarno Agreement Establishing the International Classification of Industrial Designs» came into force.

The Strasbourg Agreement establishes the International Patent Classification (IPC), which structures the fields of technology within eight sections containing some 70 000 headings. The classification allows for the identification of «prior art» as part of a patent search for documents.

The IPC helps to unify and clearly classify technical solutions embodied in patents from around the world. This international classification standard helps to make the process of searching for information on patents more efficient and convenient.

The current edition of the legislative acts of the Republic of Belarus and international treaties in the field of intellectual property can be found in the «Legislation» section of the NCIP official website.

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Photo: wipo.int/