@pipeworx/wipo-ipc

Connect: https://pipeworx.io/mcp — every tool in the catalog, including @pipeworx/wipo-ipc’s. Install: one-click buttons

No MCP client? Skip the connection: POST https://gateway.pipeworx.io/v1/tools/search_packs {"query":"..."} to find a tool below, GET /v1/tools/<name> for its schema, POST the same URL with arguments for the data — see For AI agents.

Tools: 4

International Patent Classification (IPC) lookup — title, validity and structural breakdown of a classification symbol, the groups/subgroups under it, and keyword search over classification titles. Keyless.

Tools

• ipc_lookup(symbol, version?) — one IPC symbol’s title (English/French), structural breakdown and whether it is currently valid.
• ipc_children(symbol, version?) — the symbols classified directly under one IPC symbol (main groups under a subclass, subgroups under a group), each with a title.
• ipc_search(query, version?, limit?) — IPC symbols whose title text matches a keyword, e.g. “vaccine”.
• ipc_versions() — IPC edition dates WIPO currently publishes, naming the current (in force) and latest (published, may be future-dated) editions.

Auth

Keyless. No account, no registration, no rate limit documented.

Data sources

• World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), International Patent Classification (IPC) scheme.

Notes for the next person

• IPC is not CPC. The Cooperative Patent Classification (jointly maintained by EPO and USPTO) extends IPC with much finer subdivisions, and is what EPO/USPTO actually classify most modern patents under. A CPC code (e.g. one returned verbatim by epo-ops or epo-publication-server) is not interchangeable with an IPC one even when it looks similar. This pack has no CPC awareness at all — Pipeworx has no dedicated CPC lookup pack at the time this was written.
• The catalog’s own listed OpenAPI spec for this service is a dead 404 on wipo.int. Every operation here was found by reading IPCPUB’s own front-end JavaScript and probing the resulting candidate paths live — there is no published spec to check this against.
• Symbol format: humans write “A61K 31/00” or “A01N”; the web service itself only accepts a fixed 4-character subclass form (“A01N”) or a fixed 14-character form with the main group zero-padded to 4 digits and the subgroup zero-padded to 6 (“A61K” + “0031” + “000000”). parseSymbol() is the one place that conversion happens — a 1- or 3-character partial symbol (just a section, or a class) either 404s or, for a 3-character class-level symbol specifically, 500s on the upstream’s own validity endpoint; neither is attempted here.
• Title lookup is genuinely slow and occasionally fails for huge subclasses — this is upstream, not a bug. IPCPUB’s tree-navigation endpoints (ancestors/children) render a classification’s entire nested title tree server-side on every request, with no caching: the SAME subclass fetch (A01N) measured 1.4s once and 20.8s another time. For an unusually large subclass — A61K (“medicinal preparations”), one of the biggest in the whole scheme — every key inside it reliably 504s at AWS API Gateway’s own ~29.5s integration ceiling, with {"message":"Endpoint request timed out"}, regardless of which specific node is queried (the symbol’s own key, its immediate group wrapper, or the subclass itself). ipc_lookup and ipc_children both bound this to one 28-second attempt and degrade to title_en: null / title_fr: null with a plain title_error rather than hanging — valid/structure (from the separate, fast, reliable getvalidity endpoint) are unaffected either way. A main group under A61K — e.g. A61K 31/00 — is the single symbol most likely to hit this, so don’t be surprised if a title request for it times out live; that is the upstream’s own rendering cost, confirmed by repeated direct probes, not a defect in this pack.
• A made-up but well-formed symbol does not 404 on getvalidity — it returns classification-validity: "N" (invalid), which ipc_lookup reports as valid: false. A genuinely malformed symbol (wrong section letter, missing subclass) is rejected by this pack’s own parser before any upstream call, as found: false, reason: "invalid_format".

Tools

• ipc_lookup — Look up one International Patent Classification (IPC) symbol via WIPO IPCPUB — its English/French title, structural breakdown (section/class/subclass/group/subgroup) and whether it is a currently vali
• ipc_children — List the IPC symbols directly classified under one IPC symbol — the main groups under a subclass, or the subgroups under a group — with each child’s title. Give “symbol” as a subclass (“A01N”) or a gr
• ipc_search — Find IPC symbols whose title text matches a keyword, e.g. “vaccine” or “solar cell”. Returns matching symbols with their canonical ids — call ipc_lookup on a hit for its full title and validity.
• ipc_versions — List International Patent Classification (IPC) edition dates WIPO currently publishes, with the current (in-force) and latest (published, may be future-dated) editions named.