Members

• Countries that participated in the Strasbourg Agreement or signed it later are considered members of the Strasbourg Union. Fifty-nine countries were members as of January 2009. However, more than 100 countries use the IPC for document classification, according to the World Intellectual Property Organization.
  
  

Structure

• The International Patent Classification is a hierarchical catalog of patent documents by areas of technology. The highest, and broadest, level has eight sections divided into generalized areas of technology. The next level contains 120 classes, which are broken down into more than 600 subclasses. Below the subclasses are main groups and subgroups. "The IPC contains about 70,000 groups," according to the organization.
  
  

Sections

• The eight sections aligned with general fields of technology. are Human Necessities, Performing Operations and Transporting, Chemistry and Metallurgy, Textiles and Paper, Fixed Constructions, Mechanical Engineering, Physics, and Electricity.