Subpatents are a system introduced in 1919 NE by the Western Sector government to allow companies to easily license the rights to patents as if they owned the patent.
Subpatent names are formatted as IMPORTANCE-SECTOR-SECTIONS-NUMBER.
IMPORTANCE may be one of:
V/ Vital :: Important in all circumstancesE/ Essential :: Important during galaxy-wide emergencyN/ Normal :: Important during shortagesX/ Extraneous :: Not vital in any circumstance
SECTOR may be the abbreviation of any sector. Common are E and W
for East and West.
SECTIONS is a / separated list of sections, which may be:
FO:: FlooringMA:: Materials
NUMBER is the number of the subpatent, which is a linearly
increasing integer starting at 1. The number is used to discriminate
subpatents with the same importance/sector/sections fields.
This page describes something specific to the 5000NE timeline.