The College of Pharmacy at the University of Basrah, in cooperation with the Central Organisation for Standardization and Quality Control / Directorate of Patents and Industrial Designs / Technical Department, held a course entitled (International Patent Classification (IPC) and its use in patent documentation) with the participation of researchers and specialists.

The course dealt with lectures on the history of industrial property in Iraq and the laws of that property, as well as a detailed explanation of the International Patent Classification, which is an accurate, effective and easy-to-use tool for classifying and searching patents, their granted specifications, utility models and similar technical documents.

The course showed the main sections of the International Patent Classification and classification and examination experts in patent offices who use the International Patent Classification to classify and search patent applications for examination purposes. Anyone working in research and development or inventing or applying technical solutions can benefit from the International Patent Classification in search about patents or patent information and inventors, researchers, teachers, students, lawyers, global companies, SMEs and start-ups will find it an indispensable tool.

The reasons for using the International Patent Classification is to search about 110 million patent documents around the world and enable the identification of appropriate technology in many types of patent searches or to see an overview of the technology or a complete and detailed list of patent documents related to a particular technology represented in the symbols of the International Patent Classification, in addition to how to use the International Patent Classification through the use of the symbols of the International Patent Classification in patent databases and others.

The course aimed to unify the research line between the directorate of patents and industrial models and between research and scientific authorities in the field of submitting patent applications and examining and evaluating those applications by explaining all the research methods used in the directorate and approved in all international patent offices.