THE INTERNATIONAL PATENT CLASSIFICATION: DESCRIPTION AND IMPORTANCE

Patents are ways of expressing to the market the emergence of new technologies, being supported by a specific legal framework for patent applications and patents and made available in patent databases. Among the search options offered by these banks are the International Patent Classification, a mechanism established by the Treaty of Strasbourg of 1971, which provides a hierarchical system of independent language symbols for the classification of patents and utility models according to the different areas of interest. technology to which they belong. The aim of this article was to present an overview of this classification and to present its current importance in the patenting processes and the use for data search. For that, a bibliographic research was carried out seeking publications in conventional and electronic sources, in addition to searching for specific terms. It was observed that there are few publications on the subject, which hinders the dissemination of this knowledge and minimizes the importance of Classification, a very important instrument for establishing patent indicators and analyzing technological information. It is considered an area that needs greater dissemination and popularization, since the searches made with this type of classification make several studies on the state of the art universal, aiding the whole process of Intellectual Property.