The CPC class that is heating up is the one to watch, and in 2020 a quiet but telling pattern was charging applications that reach into payment and communications classes. Application US20200055415A1, "System and method for electric vehicle charging and billing using a wireless vehicle communication service" (published February 20, 2020), is the pattern distilled: B60L 53/30, 53/31, 53/64 and 53/665 on the charging side, fused with G06Q 20/4037, 20/102 and 20/127 on the payment side.
That cross-class braid is the strategic signal. A patent that lives only in B60L is about moving electrons; a patent that pulls in G06Q is about monetizing the session. As of 2020, charging operators were beginning to treat the charge event as a commercial transaction with authentication, metering, and billing handled over a wireless link to the vehicle — and the IP started to reflect that. The classifications are the evidence that the value was migrating from the connector to the transaction.
For portfolio mapping, the lesson is to read the secondary CPC, not just the headline class. An application labeled as a charging system but classified heavily in payment is a claim on the business layer of charging. That is a different competitive surface from a hardware connector patent, and it tends to attract a different set of assignees — operators, networks, and communications players rather than cell makers.
Two caveats, both Hugo's. First, this is an A1 application; the granted scope, if any, will be narrower than the abstract. Second, do not over-read a single record into a trend — but stacked against the broader 2020 charging filings, the recurring B60L-plus-G06Q signature is real. The class to watch heading out of 2020 is exactly this intersection: charging IP that is quietly about who gets paid.