Patent Client Hits A New Milestone

Have you ever needed to look up a bunch of patents, applications, and/or assignments, and gotten frustrated or bored clicking through page after page on the USPTO website? Tired of copy/pasting into Excel or Word? Ever delegated a boring task like that to a junior associate or paralegal? Wish there was a better way? Well there is! Patent Client! And a new version was just released!

With a few short commands, you can be generating tables like this:

Or diagrams like this:

Or charts like this:

What is Patent Client?

What is Patent Client? It is a free and open-source tool for searching patent data on the USPTO and EPO website. With just a little bit of light programming, you can instantly get loads of information on patent applications, publications, patents, and more, all in a easily-usable format. Patent Client's data is sourced directly from databases at the USPTO and EPO, providing up-to-the-minute and accurate information. Combine it with Google's Collaboratory, and you can get up and running quickly and easily. An example notebook to get you started is here. (just copy and edit away!)

What can Patent Client access?

Patent Client has access to USPTO Applications, Patents, Published Applications, and Assignments. Additionally, it can access the EPO's global patent publication database, legal status, and worldwide patent family information. If there's another API, let me know, and I can work on integrating. At the moment, I'm looking at CourtListener as a logical next step to add litigation information.

Do I have to know Python?

While Patent Client is a python library, you only need to know just a little bit of python, but not much, and you can pick it up quickly. Here's a minimal example:

import patent_client # imports the library

# Search for all applications assigned to an examiner

exam = USApplication.objects.filter(app_exam_name="<Some Examiner's Name>")

# Limit the output to just a few fields

exam_df = (exam.values(
  'appl_id', 
  'app_filing_date', 
  'patent_title', 
  'patent_number', 
  'app_status', 
  'app_status_date'
  )
      .to_pandas()
)
  

exam_df.head()        

This produces this chart:

This, and many more details of how Patent Client works is provided in the detailed documentation.

Where can I see examples using Patent Client?

The documentation has a great User Guide and Examples showing some possible uses of Patent Client. This includes:

• looking up patent expiration dates
• getting US and international patents belonging to a company
• doing statistics on examiners
• generating continuity graphs

Pandas? Why are there bears involved?

Pandas is the name of one of the most widely used data science tools in Python. All the results in Patent Client can be turned into a Pandas DataFrame (kind of like a spreadsheet) just by calling ".to_pandas" on something. Once you have it in a DataFrame, you can then use Pandas to sort, process, analyze, and do anything else you want. It's the gateway to the wide world of python data science tools.

It also can output data in lots of different formats. Want to load the result into a database? Just call ".to_sql()" Want to copy the results to paste somewhere else? Just call ".to_clipboard()" And of course, you can call ".to_excel()" to create an excel spreadsheet.

I tried something and it didn't work

That's OK! There is a bit of learning curve with tools like Patent Client. A good place to look for answers on basic python questions is StackOverflow. Also, patent data is a very diverse and interesting set of information, which sometimes has bugs. If you think you've found a bug, just tell me about it on the bug tracker, and I'll look into it.

I still have questions!

That's OK too! Just shoot me a message on LinkedIn!

License & Disclaimer

Patent Client is free and open source software released under the Apache Software License 2.0. I am a lawyer, but I'm not your lawyer. Nothing in this post, or anything else I provide on LinkedIn is legal advice. Nothing provided by Patent Client should be considered legal advice.

Use common sense when making decisions based on information provided by Patent Client. The databases that support Patent Client are run by the USPTO and EPO, and not by me. You may find (and there definitely are) problems with the data, both in terms of missing and inaccurate information. I have no power to fix the USPTO and EPO's issues. As with all software, there may be bugs. Feel free to report them.