Plant Patent CPC Statistics

I don't remember seeing anything saying that plant patents would receive CPC assignements but I noticed them on plant patents late in 2016. Each Tuesday I use the uspto's patft ppubs to retrieve the plant patents that were issued that day and add them to my database. There are currently 36,612 plant patents issued from August 18, 1931 through April 15, 2025 in my database. 19,565 of them have been assigned one or more Cooperative Patent Classification. There is no bulk source of cpcs for non utility patents that I am aware of (besides plant patents, reissued patents can also have cpc assignments). If a plant patent's cooperative classification changes over time it wouldn't be reflected in my database.

The links below will do searches in the uspto's ppubs for plants using the cpc shown. The searches can return more plant patents than I have in my database as the uspto adds cpc classifications to plant patents I have already retrieved. (The uspto counts of patents can be higher than the counts shown below. As I write this, the first link returns 13,720 patents while my database only knows about 12,791 of them.)



Most popular cpcs used by plant patents
countcpcdescription
12,880A01H 5/02(5/00) Angiosperms, i.e. flowering plants, characterised by their plant parts (5/02) Flowers
2,153A01H 5/08(5/00) Angiosperms, i.e. flowering plants, characterised by their plant parts (5/08) Fruits
1,351A01H 6/749(6/00) Angiosperms, i.e. flowering plants, characterised by their botanic taxonomy (6/74) Rosaceae, e.g. strawberry, apple, almonds, pear, rose, blackberries or raspberries (6/749) Rosa, i.e. roses
1,284A01H 6/14(6/00) Angiosperms, i.e. flowering plants, characterised by their botanic taxonomy (6/14) Asteraceae or Compositae, e.g. safflower, sunflower, artichoke or lettuce
1,206A01H 6/1424(6/00) Angiosperms, i.e. flowering plants, characterised by their botanic taxonomy (6/14) Asteraceae or Compositae, e.g. safflower, sunflower, artichoke or lettuce (6/1424) Chrysanthemum
863A01H 5/00(5/00) Angiosperms, i.e. flowering plants, characterised by their plant parts
825A01H 5/12(5/00) Angiosperms, i.e. flowering plants, characterised by their plant parts (5/12) Leaves


Least popular cpcs used by plant patents
countcpcdescription
1A01G 17/02(17/00) Cultivation of hops, vines, fruit trees, or like trees (17/02) Cultivation of hops or vines
1A01G 7/00(7/00) Botany in general
1A01H 1/04(1/00) Processes for modifying genotypes A01H4/00 takes precedence (1/04) Processes of selection
1A01H 1/08(1/00) Processes for modifying genotypes A01H4/00 takes precedence (1/06) Processes for producing mutations, e.g. treatment with chemicals or with radiation mutation or genetic engineering C12N15/00 (1/08) Methods or apparatus for producing changes in chromosome number


Distribution of cpcs per plant patent
# cpcscount
112,369
27,040
3119
428
58
61


most cpcs
# cpcsPatents
5PP16566 PP23685 PP23694 PP23718 PP23740 PP24041 PP24055 PP27197
6PP23106


Earliest Plant Patent with a CPC
Patent notitleissue_datecpc
PP11728Anthurium plant 'A4'2001-01-02A01H 5/02


Issue dates with the most plants with a CPC
countissue_date
492015-11-24
492016-03-08
472011-12-20
462006-08-22
462006-06-20


Most Recent Issue Dates with Plant CPCs
issue datepatents
2025-04-15PP36595 PP36599 PP36602 PP36604 PP36605 PP36606 PP36609 PP36611
2025-04-08PP36585 PP36588 PP36589 PP36590 PP36591 PP36592 PP36593
2025-04-01PP36575 PP36576 PP36579 PP36581 PP36582 PP36583 PP36584
2025-03-25PP36566 PP36571 PP36572
2025-03-18PP36553 PP36554 PP36556 PP36557 PP36558 PP36560 PP36562 PP36564


Most recent issue dates where no plant patents had CPCs
# plant patentsissue date
62024-08-13
32024-01-02
112023-04-18
52020-02-11
162019-10-15


Fine print: I scraped the cpcs shown here by retrieving each plant patent from the uspto's web site. Their CPCs could change over time but I'm not making any effort to keep up with potential changes. I am not aware of a bulk source of CPCs for non utility patents.

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