The function--application relation through a link between classification and indexing

The International Patent Classification (IPC) gives a fundamental importance to the distinction between function and application. This distinction constitutes one of the most important classifying rules for patent documents. Most indexing languages do not follow this principle -- they deal with this difference by selecting supplementary exact terms or by establishing more definite multiple-term syntagms. End-users have to formulate their searches with relevant terms or a combination of them. With so many different principles, is a connection between scientific information and technical information based only on the IPC still relevant? In this paper, we present a study which attempts to show that the lack of formal distinction between function and application, in the case of thematic indexing, does not create ambiguities. Moreover, at the same time, it allows one to select bibliographic references which only refer to functional aspects and references which only refer to applications. By means of a few examples, we endeavour to show that the distinction between function and application can be advantageously exploited by using both this technical classification and the indexing of scientific databases. Additionally, this distinction provides the opportunity to explore one of the multiple paths between the documentary representation of the scientific literature and the documentary representation of the technical literature.