Google Patents Intelligence

Scrapes patents from Google Patents with global coverage across the USPTO, EPO, WIPO, JPO, China, Korea, and 100+ other patent offices. Returns underwriting-grade factual records — patent ID, title, abstract, all inventors, current and original assignees, CPC classifications, backward + forward citation counts, claims count, legal status, PDF URL, and a deterministic summary built from the extracted facts.

Five modes: keyword search, by assignee (company), by inventor, patent details (for a specific ID list), and incremental monitoring for scheduled alerts on new filings.

Why use this actor?

• IP attorneys — monitor client portfolios, watch competitor filings, track legal status changes.
• Competitive intelligence — sweep all patents assigned to a competitor, bucket by CPC class, surface forward-citation leaders (the most-cited = most foundational).
• M&A analysts — audit a target's patent portfolio size, inventor concentration, and citation quality.
• Investor research — map pharma pipelines, semiconductor IP, or AI-model patents across a watchlist of companies.
• Academic + journalism — extract structured citations and classifications for research without manual copy-paste.
• AI / LLM training pipelines — clean, structured patent metadata ready for ingestion.

How to use it

1. Pick a mode — keyword search (most common), by_assignee (company sweep), by_inventor, details (specific IDs), or monitor (incremental, for schedules).
2. Set filters — countries (e.g. ["US", "EP"]), date range, legal status (any / granted / application / expired).
3. Pick enrichment depth — basic returns search-card fields (faster, cheaper); deep follows each result to its Google Patents detail page for the full ~20-field record (recommended).
4. Run. Export as JSON / CSV / Excel, or point a downstream pipeline at the Apify dataset API.

Input

Keyword search — simple:

{
    "mode": "search",
    "query": "quantum computing",
    "countries": ["US", "EP"],
    "enrichmentDepth": "deep",
    "maxResults": 100
}

By assignee — company sweep:

{
    "mode": "by_assignee",
    "assignees": ["Apple Inc", "NVIDIA Corp"],
    "countries": ["US"],
    "statusFilter": "granted",
    "enrichmentDepth": "deep",
    "maxResults": 500
}

By inventor:

{
    "mode": "by_inventor",
    "inventors": ["Yann LeCun"],
    "enrichmentDepth": "deep",
    "maxResults": 50
}

Patent details — specific IDs:

{
    "mode": "details",
    "patentIds": ["US10000000B2", "EP3456789A1", "WO2021123456A1"]
}

Monitor — scheduled alerts on new filings:

{
    "mode": "monitor",
    "query": "(LLM OR \"large language model\") AND attention",
    "countries": ["US", "EP", "WO"],
    "incrementalMode": true,
    "maxResults": 500
}

Output

Each row is one patent with the full factual field set:

{
    "patentId": "US8064700B2",
    "url": "https://patents.google.com/patent/US8064700B2/en",
    "scrapedAt": "2026-04-23T17:51:34.126Z",
    "title": "Method and system for character recognition",
    "abstract": "Character recognition is described. In one embodiment, it may use matched sequences rather than character shape to determine a computer-legible result.",
    "countryCode": "US",
    "applicationNumber": "US:12/721,456",
    "filingDate": "2010-03-10",
    "publicationDate": "2011-11-22",
    "priorityDate": "2004-02-15",
    "inventors": ["Martin T. King", "Dale L. Grover", "Clifford A. Kushler", "James Q. Stafford-Fraser"],
    "assigneeCurrent": "Google LLC",
    "legalStatus": "Expired - Lifetime",
    "isGranted": true,
    "cpcClassifications": ["G06F16/951", "G06F16/9538", "G06V10/10", "G06V30/10", "G06Q30/0207", "..."],
    "backwardCitationsCount": 185,
    "forwardCitationsCount": 27,
    "nonPatentCitationsCount": 136,
    "claimsCount": 18,
    "pdfUrl": "https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/ec/04/0e/f4e7ccb0271700/US8064700.pdf",
    "summaryText": "US8064700B2, granted 2011-11-22. Assigned to Google LLC. Filed 2010-03-10. Inventors: Martin T. King, Dale L. Grover, Clifford A. Kushler (+1 more). 18 claims, 185 backward citations, 27 forward citations.",
    "enrichmentDepth": "deep"
}

Data fields

Field	Type	Notes
patentId	string	Publication number, e.g. US10000000B2 (dedup key)
url	string	Canonical Google Patents URL
title	string	Patent title
abstract	string	Short abstract / meta description
countryCode	string	2-letter patent-office code (US/EP/WO/JP/CN/...)
applicationNumber	string	Official application number
filingDate, publicationDate, priorityDate, grantDate	YYYY-MM-DD	Key patent-lifecycle dates
inventors	string[]	All named inventors
assigneeCurrent, assigneeOriginal	string	Current and original owners
legalStatus	string	"Active" / "Expired - Lifetime" / "Application" / etc.
isGranted	bool	Heuristic from publication-number suffix
cpcClassifications	string[]	CPC codes (most-specific "leaf" codes preferred)
backwardCitationsCount	number	Prior patents cited by this patent
forwardCitationsCount	number	Later patents citing this patent
nonPatentCitationsCount	number	Cited non-patent literature
claimsCount	number	Number of claims
pdfUrl	string	Direct PDF link from Google Patents storage
summaryText	string	Deterministic template built from factual fields — not a copy of any Google Patents text

How much does it cost?

Pay-per-event — you pay only for records written to the dataset:

Event	Price	When it fires
Patent (basic)	$0.002	Search-card fields only (mode: basic)
Patent (deep)	$0.008	Detail-page enriched (mode: deep)
New filing alert	$0.001	Emitted only in incremental mode when a patent is newly seen since the last run

Free trial: the first 20 deep records OR 200 basic records per run are free.

Typical run costs:

Scenario	Cost
100 deep records	$0.64
100 basic records	$0 (within trial)
500 deep records	$3.84
1,000 deep records	$7.84
Scheduled monitor w/ 20 new hits/run	$0.24/run

Tips

• Deep vs. basic — deep follows each search result to its detail page for ~15 additional fields (full abstract, CPC codes, citation counts, claims count, legal status, PDF URL, full inventor list). Worth 4× the price for any serious analytics workflow.
• Country filter — Google Patents indexes 100+ patent offices. Use ["US"] to limit to USPTO, ["US", "EP"] for US + Europe, etc.
• Date windows — dateFrom and dateTo filter by filing date. Useful for time-bounded competitive-intel sweeps.
• Monitor mode — set up a schedule (e.g. nightly) with incrementalMode: true. The actor only emits newly-filed patents matching your query on each run, and charges a new-filing-alert event in addition to the record event.
• Search operators — query accepts Google Patents' own operators: quotes for phrases, AND / OR / NOT, parentheses, assignee:"Company", inventor:"Name". Example: "generative AI" AND (transformer OR attention).
• Pagination cap — Google Patents returns at most 100 pages × 100 results = 10,000 hits per query. For broader sweeps, narrow with filters (country, date, status).

Legal

This actor extracts factual metadata (patent IDs, bibliographic dates, inventor/assignee names, CPC codes, citation counts) from Google Patents. These are public facts from official patent offices (USPTO, EPO, WIPO, etc.) — factual data not subject to copyright. The summaryText field is a deterministic template built from the extracted factual fields, not a paraphrase or copy of any Google Patents text.

Google Patents is a public search interface over patent-office data. Users are responsible for ensuring their usage complies with Google's Terms of Service and any data-protection obligations that apply to their workflows.

FAQ

Q: What patent offices are covered? A: All offices indexed by Google Patents — USPTO (US), EPO (EP), WIPO (WO), JPO (JP), SIPO/CNIPA (CN), KIPO (KR), DPMA (DE), UKIPO (GB), INPI (FR), and 90+ more. Use the countries filter to restrict to specific offices.

Q: Can I get the full patent claims text or drawings? A: This actor returns the claims count (number of claims) but not the full claims text. For full claims text, use the PDF URL in the output to download the patent PDF, or build a follow-up workflow that fetches claims from a patent-office bulk-data service.

Q: How current is the data? A: Google Patents typically indexes new filings within ~1 week of publication. Incremental/monitor mode picks up new filings as they appear.

Q: What's the difference between assigneeCurrent and assigneeOriginal? A: Patents can be reassigned over time (acquisitions, license transfers). assigneeOriginal is the first assignee recorded in the patent filing; assigneeCurrent reflects the latest recorded owner.

Q: Are trademarks supported? A: Not in v1 — this actor is patents-only. A trademark-specific actor is on the roadmap.

Support: file issues or feature requests via the actor's Apify Console page.