WIPO Launches Tool to Facilitate Green Tech Patent Searches

Geneva, September 16, 2010
PR/2010/657

WIPO launched on September 16, 2010 an on-line tool that is linked to its International Patent Classification (IPC) system to facilitate searches for patent information relating to environmentally sound technologies (ESTs). This will help to help in identifying existing and emerging green technologies, as well as potential partners for further R&D and commercial exploitation. 

The tool, “IPC Green Inventory”, contains some 200 topics that are directly relevant to ESTs. Each topic is linked with the most relevant IPC symbols, chosen by experts from around the world.   

The IPC Green Inventory is based on a list of technological terms listed by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). The inventory is hyperlinked to WIPO’s PATENTSCOPE® service to automatically search and show all “green” international applications under the Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT).  

The IPC Green Inventory will also help researchers and industry to avoid investing R&D resources in developing green technology that already exists.  

The IPC system divides all fields of technology into hierarchical sets of sections, classes, subclasses and groups.  It is an indispensable tool for industrial property offices, in conducting searches to establish the novelty of an invention, or to determine the state of the art in a particular area of technology.