United States Patent and Trademark Office
Rapporteur Report: F037
Subject: Additive Manufacturing
Date: 12 September 2014
Rapporteur Report
Ref.: Annexes 4, 5, 6, 8, and 16 of the project file
Background
The English and French versions of the scheme for B33Y were approved at IPC/WG/31.
There is no RCL for this project.
An initial proposal for definitions was made in Annex 4 of the project file. In Annex 5 SE
commented that is was unclear why buildup welding was excluded from B33Y, and that the first
two bullets in the “special rules of classification” section of the subclass definition were more
appropriate in the section titled “relationship between large subject matter areas”. In Annex 6 we
indicated our belief that the two bullets were properly located in the definitions, and proposed a
modified definition in Annex 8 that corrected minor issues. In Annex 16 SE iterated their
position that the two bullets were incorrectly located in the definitions, referencing generally the
Guidelines for Drafting Classification Definitions (D000/A25), without providing reasons nor
citing specific passages in the Guidelines.
Comments
We confirm our belief that the first two bullets in the “special rule of classification” section of
the B33Y subclass definition are correctly placed within the definition structure. We believe the
Guidelines support the placement of this information in the special rules section and teach away
from placement of this information in the section “relationship between large subject matter
areas”.
The first Special Rule bullet, whose placement SE questions is:
•
This subclass is for obligatory supplementary classification of subject matter
already classified as such in other classification places, when the subject matter contains an
aspect of additive manufacturing.
The Guidelines indicates that the definition section “Relationships with other classification
places” is used –
When the scope of the subclass is generally affected by its relationships with other places, and
those relationships cannot entirely be expressed in the form of references, then those
relationships are stated here.
The first bullet states that the scope of subclass B33Y is not affected by any other subclass, and
that classification of a document in B33Y is obligatory if an additive manufacturing facet is
present in the document. We do not feel that the concept “no relationship exists” is the same
thing as the concept that there is a relationship, as described in the Guidelines. We understand
that the language of the bullet may be obscuring its intended meaning, so we propose changing
the language of the bullet to the following:
•
This subclass is for obligatory supplementary classification of subject matter when
the subject matter contains an aspect of additive manufacturing.
We feel this revised bullet states exactly the same concept as the earlier version, and makes it
clearer that the special rule pertains to obligatory supplementary classification, and not to a scope
relationship with another subclass that doesn’t exist.
The second bullet, whose placement in the definition is questioned, is:
•
The classification symbols of this subclass are not listed first when assigned to
patent documents.
This refers only to how symbols from B33Y are listed on printed documents and that the ST.8
Position value of B33Y allocated symbols may not have a value of “First”. These things do not
appear to us to be the sort of things that define a “relationship” between subclass B33Y and any
other subclass, particularly with respect to scopes, as required for the section on “relationships”
by the Guidelines. Furthermore, this rule applies only to B33Y symbol allocations, and not to
symbols from other subclasses. The Special Rules section of the definitions is intended to cover
just these kinds of rules.
Summary
We believe the placement of the first two bullets in the “Special Rules” section of the subclass
definition is correct in Annex 8, and that the Guidelines for Drafting IPC Definitions supports
their placement. We have proposed changing the wording of the first bullet, in accompanying
Annex 18, to clarify that allocations made to subclass B33Y are obligatory supplementary in
nature, and that the scope of B33Y is not connected in any way to the scope of another subclass.
The second bullet refers only to attributes of B33Y allocations, and in no way define a scope
relationship between subclass B33Y and any other subclass, that is necessary for placement in
the Relationship section of the definitions.
We urge the working group to approve the proposed modified definitions of Annex 18.
D Bender