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 |
|---|
| count | cpc | description |
| 12,880 | A01H 5/02 | (5/00) Angiosperms, i.e. flowering plants, characterised by their plant parts (5/02) Flowers |
| 2,153 | A01H 5/08 | (5/00) Angiosperms, i.e. flowering plants, characterised by their plant parts (5/08) Fruits |
| 1,351 | A01H 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 |
| 1,284 | A01H 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 |
| 1,206 | A01H 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 |
| 863 | A01H 5/00 | (5/00) Angiosperms, i.e. flowering plants, characterised by their plant parts |
| 825 | A01H 5/12 | (5/00) Angiosperms, i.e. flowering plants, characterised by their plant parts (5/12) Leaves |
| Least popular cpcs used by plant patents |
|---|
| count | cpc | description |
| 1 | A01G 17/02 | (17/00) Cultivation of hops, vines, fruit trees, or like trees (17/02) Cultivation of hops or vines |
| 1 | A01G 7/00 | (7/00) Botany in general |
| 1 | A01H 1/04 | (1/00) Processes for modifying genotypes A01H4/00 takes precedence (1/04) Processes of selection |
| 1 | A01H 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 |
|---|
| # cpcs | count |
| 1 | 12,369 |
| 2 | 7,040 |
| 3 | 119 |
| 4 | 28 |
| 5 | 8 |
| 6 | 1 |
| Earliest Plant Patent with a CPC |
|---|
| Patent no | title | issue_date | cpc |
| PP11728 | Anthurium plant 'A4' | 2001-01-02 | A01H 5/02 |
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.