Google Patents MCP - Search, Details, Citations, AI Summaries

The Google Patents API for AI agents and IP professionals. Use this actor with Claude, Cursor, ChatGPT, or any MCP-compatible AI agent.

Search Google Patents by keyword, inventor, or assignee across USPTO, EPO, WIPO, JPO, CN, KR, and 100+ patent offices. Pull full patent details: claims, citations, family graphs, CPC classifications, and PDF URLs. Get AI-generated patent summaries (top assignees, inventors, and CPC classes with percentage and year-range frequency). Pay per event - no flat monthly fees.

Use it from your AI agent

Wire this actor into Claude, Cursor, ChatGPT, or any MCP client and your agent can run tasks like:

• "Find all patents filed by Apple in the last 5 years and return assignees, inventors, filing dates, and citation counts."
• "Pull the full claims, abstract, and citation network for patent US10123456B2."
• "Get an AI-generated summary of patents about graphene battery with the top assignees and CPC classes."
• "Monitor new patents filed in CPC class H01M for any new applications since last month."
• "Build a citation graph from patent US11734097B1 showing all backward and forward citations."
• "Find all patents by inventor John Smith at IBM and rank by forward citation count."

For IP attorneys, R&D teams, and patent valuation specialists

This actor is built for professional patent work:

• Prior-art search - Full keyword + filter search across 100+ offices with CPC/IPC classification filtering and date-range filtering on priority, filing, or publication dates.
• Freedom-to-operate analysis - Pull full claims text and citation networks for any patent in seconds; export as JSON to feed into your claim-chart workflow.
• Technology landscaping - The AI summary block returns top assignees and top CPC classes for any search, with year-range frequency arrays so you can visualize a technology landscape in one chart.
• Patent valuation - Forward citation counts (cited_by) come back with every details lookup, ready to feed citation-weighted valuation models.
• Competitive intelligence - byAssignee mode gives you every patent from a target company filtered to a country, type, status, and date range, in one call.

Quick start

Run as an MCP tool (Claude, Cursor, ChatGPT)

Connect your AI agent to Apify's MCP server, then call this actor by its full name:

johnvc/google-patents-api

The actor's input schema is fully described with title and description fields on every parameter, so your agent can pick the right inputs on its own.

Run from the Apify console

1. Click Try for free on the actor page.
2. Fill in a search query, e.g. q: graphene battery, max_pages: 2.
3. Click Start. Results land in the default dataset, one row per search page.

Run via the Apify API

curl -X POST "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/johnvc~google-patents-api/runs?token=YOUR_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "q": "graphene battery",
    "country": "US,EP",
    "after": "filing:20200101",
    "max_pages": 3,
    "include_ai_summary": true
  }'

Input parameters

The actor accepts one flat input form. The mode is implicit from which fields you fill:

Field	Type	Description
q	string	Free-text search query. At least one of q, patent_id, assignee, or inventor is required.
patent_id	string	Provide to fetch full details for a specific patent. Format patent/US10123456B2/en or patent/US10123456B2.
assignee	string	Comma-separated assignee names (e.g. Apple,Microsoft).
inventor	string	Comma-separated inventor names.
country	string	Comma-separated patent office codes: US, EP, WO, JP, KR, CN, DE, GB, FR, CA, AU, IN, ...
language	string	Comma-separated language codes: EN, DE, ZH, FR, ES, AR, JA, KO, PT, RU, IT, NL, SV, FI, NO, DA.
status	enum	GRANT or APPLICATION.
type	enum	PATENT or DESIGN.
before / after	string	Date filters in the form type:YYYYMMDD, where type is priority, filing, or publication.
sort	enum	relevance, new, old.
litigation	enum	YES or NO.
num	integer	Results per page (10 to 100, default 10).
max_pages	integer	Number of pages to fetch (default 1, 0 for unlimited).
include_ai_summary	boolean	Attach the AI summary block to the first page item.
include_details	boolean	After pagination, also pull full details for each result up to 10 patents.

Output

Each dataset item represents one page of search results (or one details record). The shape is:

{
  "search_parameters": { ... },
  "search_metadata": {
    "total_results": 1340,
    "patents_count": 10,
    "pages_processed": 1,
    "mode": "search"
  },
  "search_timestamp": "2026-05-14T12:34:56",
  "page_number": 1,
  "patents": [
    {
      "patent_id": "patent/US10123456B2/en",
      "title": "...",
      "snippet": "...",
      "assignee": ["..."],
      "inventor": ["..."],
      "priority_date": "2018-01-15",
      "filing_date": "2019-01-15",
      "grant_date": "2021-11-23",
      "publication_date": "2021-11-23",
      "publication_number": "US10123456B2",
      "pdf": "https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/..."
    }
  ],
  "ai_summary": {
    "assignees": [{ "key": "...", "percentage": 12.4, "frequency": [...] }],
    "inventors": [...],
    "cpc": [...]
  }
}

In details mode, the same item also carries a details object with claims, cpc_classifications, patent_citations, non_patent_citations, cited_by, worldwide_applications, parent/child/priority applications, legal_events, images, and the PDF URL.

Pricing

Pay per event:

Event	Price
Setup (per run)	$0.02
Page processed (one dataset item written)	$0.02

A search page (~10 patents), a details lookup, and a details-mode result each count as one page_processed. Use max_pages and include_details to control your total spend.

Scheduled monitoring

To monitor new filings, schedule this actor in the Apify console and pair it with the after: publication:YYYYMMDD parameter. Each run returns only patents published after your cursor date - feed the dataset into your downstream alerting workflow.

Support

Issues or feature requests: open a ticket on the Apify actor page or message the maintainer through the Apify console.

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Last Updated: 2026.05.19