patents-research

Researches patents and patent applications via the Crawlora API — Google Patents (full-text search by keyword/inventor/assignee, bibliographic detail, claims/citations/family, CPC classification lookup, recent-publications browse, database coverage) and USPTO Patent Public Search (full-text search with USPTO's own Advanced Search syntax, document detail) — returning clean JSON. Use when the user wants prior-art search, a specific patent's claims/citations/family, an inventor's or company's patent portfolio, or freedom-to-operate research.

Patent research

Search and look up patents across Google Patents and USPTO Patent Public Search — full-text search, bibliographic detail, claims, citations, patent family, and classification lookup — all as normalized JSON from the Crawlora API, no scraping of patent-office pages.

When to use this skill

• "Find patents about X" / "prior-art search for X" (keyword, inventor, or assignee).
• "What does patent US10758101B2 claim?" / "Show me this patent's citations and family members."
• "What's this company's / inventor's patent portfolio?"
• "What CPC classification covers X?" (e.g. A61K31/00).
• "What patents were published this week?" (recent-publications browse).
• Freedom-to-operate or landscape research needing both Google Patents' broader index and USPTO's own official full-text search with its field-code query syntax.

Setup (one-time)

• Get a free Crawlora API key (2,000 credits/mo, no card) at https://crawlora.net.
• Set CRAWLORA_API_KEY in the environment before running the helper.
• The helper reads CRAWLORA_API_KEY from the environment and sends requests to https://api.crawlora.net/api/v1. Missing/invalid key → 401.

How it works

1. Google Patents search — /googlepatents/search (q, plus optional inventor/assignee/country/status/type/language/sort/date filters via before+after+date_field) returns normalized hits plus top-assignee/top-inventor/top-classification breakdowns over the full result set.
2. Google Patents detail — /googlepatents/detail (number, a publication number like US10758101B2) returns title, abstract, inventors, assignees, dates, legal status, CPC/IPC classifications, claims, description, citations, cited-by patents, family members, and similar documents.
3. Google Patents helpers — /googlepatents/suggest (field=inventor|assignee, value) for autocomplete; /googlepatents/classification (code, e.g. A61K31/00, or any section/class/subclass level) for a CPC symbol's title and tree position; /googlepatents/recent (week, ISO 8601 YYYY-Www) to browse one week's indexed publications; /googlepatents/coverage for per-country per-year grant/application counts.
4. USPTO Patent Public Search — /usptoppubs/search (q, USPTO's own Advanced Search / BRS syntax: field codes like battery.ti. or Microsoft.as., date ranges like @pd>=20200101<=20241231, boolean/proximity operators, wildcards; optional databases to scope to US-PGPUB/USPAT/USOCR) returns bibliographic results, then /usptoppubs/detail (guid+source, both taken from a search result) fetches one document's full text — abstract, description, and claims.

Full endpoint list, methods, and params: reference/endpoints.md.

Calling the API

sh

# Google Patents keyword search:
scripts/crawlora.sh /googlepatents/search q="solid state battery" | jq '.'

# Filter by assignee + date range:
scripts/crawlora.sh /googlepatents/search q="battery" assignee="Tesla" after="2020-01-01" | jq '.'

# Patent detail (claims, citations, family):
scripts/crawlora.sh /googlepatents/detail number=US10758101B2 | jq '.'

# CPC classification lookup:
scripts/crawlora.sh /googlepatents/classification code=A61K31/00 | jq '.'

# USPTO full-text search (BRS field-code syntax):
scripts/crawlora.sh /usptoppubs/search q='battery.ti. AND @pd>=20200101<=20241231' | jq '.'

Use scripts/crawlora.sh for all requests; it keeps the API key out of command-line arguments.

Endpoint reference

See reference/endpoints.md for every Google Patents and USPTO Patent Public Search endpoint this skill uses.

Examples

• Prior-art search: /googlepatents/search with a keyword + assignee/ inventor filters, then /googlepatents/detail on the strongest hits for full claims and citations.
• Portfolio research: /googlepatents/search scoped to one assignee, sorted new, to see a company's recent filings; /googlepatents/detail on any individual patent for its full family (continuations, divisionals, foreign counterparts).
• Cross-source verification: run the same query through both /googlepatents/search (broader index, easier free-text) and /usptoppubs/search (USPTO's own authoritative full-text index with precise field-code queries) to cross-check coverage.
• Landscape/trend view: /googlepatents/coverage for indexing volume by country/year, or /googlepatents/recent to sample one week's publications in a technology area.

Notes & limits

• Credits / pay-on-success: billed only on 2xx; free tier 2,000 credits/mo. Key at https://crawlora.net.
• Public data only — public patent-office search/detail pages.
• Security: key lives in CRAWLORA_API_KEY only — never hardcode, query-param, or commit it.
• USPTO's q syntax is not free text — it's USPTO's own Advanced Search (BRS) query language (field codes, date-range operators, boolean/ proximity operators, wildcards). Google Patents' q is plain free-text with separate structured filter params instead.
• /usptoppubs/detail's guid/source must come from a prior /usptoppubs/search result — they aren't guessable identifiers.
• Search results are paginated (page/num, 0-indexed) — walk pages for full coverage beyond the first page.