EPO Patent Search & Monitor – European Patents, No API Key

Search new European patent applications and granted EP patents by title keyword, applicant name or CPC class, and get clean JSON, CSV or Excel records. Data comes from the European Patent Office's official Linked Open EP Data service (CC BY 4.0). No EPO API key, no login, no proxy – and the Actor never touches a browser.

Turn on monitor mode to get only publications you have not seen before – a ready-made weekly patent watch for a competitor, a technology or a CPC class.

What does EPO Patent Search do?

• Searches EP publications (A and B documents) of the European Patent Bulletin, published every Wednesday
• Filters by title keywords (English, German and French titles), applicant names, CPC class prefixes (e.g. H01M, G06N, Y02E), publication date window and document kind (applications or grants)
• Returns structured records with publication number and kind, all three titles, applicants and their country, CPC, application number, filing and grant date, priorities, PCT number, simple family ID, and links to Espacenet and the European Patent Register
• Monitor mode (onlyNew) remembers what you already received
• Privacy by design: never returns inventors or representatives (patent attorneys); applicant names can be switched off too

Who is it for?

• R&D, innovation and IP teams watching competitors or technology fields
• Patent attorneys and IP consultants running watches for several clients
• Technology scouts, analysts and investors looking for who files what in Europe
• AI agent builders who need a structured, citable patent feed

Use cases: European patent monitoring

• 🔭 Competitor patent watch. Run with applicants: ["Bosch"] every Thursday and get the competitor's new EP filings and grants in Slack or a Google Sheet.
• ⚡ Technology radar. Track CPC Y02E (clean energy) or the keywords "solid-state battery" and "Festkörperbatterie" every week.
• 📈 Grant tracking. Use publicationKinds: "grants" to see which patents were granted, e.g. ahead of opposition deadlines (check those in the EP Register).
• 🤖 AI summaries. Feed new publications into an LLM that writes a weekly briefing.

How to search European patents in 4 steps

1. Click Start. The prefilled input (title keywords "hydrogen" / "Wasserstoff", last 60 days, max 20) runs in seconds.
2. Set your keywords, applicant names and/or CPC prefixes. At least one filter is required.
3. For a weekly watch, set onlyNew: true and a monitorId, then add a schedule (e.g. every Thursday).
4. Export as JSON, CSV or Excel, or connect an integration.

Input example

{
  "keywords": ["battery", "Batterie"],
  "applicants": [],
  "cpcCodes": ["H01M"],
  "publishedWithinDays": 30,
  "publicationKinds": "all",
  "titleLanguage": "de",
  "includeApplicants": true,
  "maxResults": 100,
  "onlyNew": true,
  "monitorId": "battery-watch"
}

Filters of different types are combined with AND. Values within one filter are combined with OR.

Field	Meaning
keywords	Words in the title of the invention (EN/DE/FR). Case-insensitive substring match, so batter finds "battery", and hydrogen also finds "hydrogensilane".
applicants	Substring of an applicant name, e.g. Siemens (matches Siemens AG, Siemens Energy, Siemens Healthineers …).
cpcCodes	CPC prefixes, e.g. H01M, G06N3/08, Y02E. Matches inventive and additional CPC symbols.
publishedWithinDays	Window ending today (1–366). Ignored if dateFrom is set.
dateFrom / dateTo	Explicit publication date range (YYYY-MM-DD), max 366 days.
publicationKinds	all, applications (A1/A2/A3) or grants (B1/B2/B3).
titleLanguage	Language for the title field (en, de, fr).
includeApplicants	Set to false to omit applicant names.
maxResults	Hard cap on returned and charged records (1–1000).
onlyNew + monitorId	Monitor mode: skip publications returned by earlier runs of the same monitor.

Output: European patent data fields

Real record from a test run on 22 Oct 2026 (applicants: ["Siemens"], grants, last 60 days):

{
  "publicationNumber": "EP3754550B1",
  "kind": "B1",
  "publicationType": "granted patent",
  "publicationDate": "2026-10-14",
  "title": "VERFAHREN ZUR BEREITSTELLUNG EINES AGGREGATALGORITHMUS ZUR VERARBEITUNG VON MEDIZINISCHEN DATEN …",
  "titleEn": "METHOD FOR PROVIDING AN AGGREGATE ALGORITHM FOR PROCESSING MEDICAL DATA AND METHOD FOR PROCESSING MEDICAL DATA",
  "applicants": [{ "name": "Siemens Healthineers AG", "country": "DE" }],
  "applicantNames": "Siemens Healthineers AG",
  "cpcInventive": ["G06F 18/24133", "G06V 10/776"],
  "applicationNumber": "EP19181607.3",
  "filingDate": "2019-06-21",
  "grantDate": "2026-10-14",
  "simpleFamilyId": "67001600",
  "procedureLanguage": "en",
  "espacenetUrl": "https://worldwide.espacenet.com/patent/search?q=pn%3DEP3754550B1",
  "registerUrl": "https://register.epo.org/application?number=EP19181607",
  "linkedDataUrl": "https://data.epo.org/linked-data/data/publication/EP/3754550/B1/-",
  "source": "EPO Linked Open EP Data (CC BY 4.0)"
}

Application example (A1, keyword "hydrogen"): EP4820361A1, "METHOD FOR PREPARING ULTRA-PURE ORGANOALKOXYHYDROGENSILANES", applicant Wacker Chemie AG (DE), filed 2024-11-06, priority WO2023EP084593, PCT WO2024EP081354.

Each run also writes a RUN-SUMMARY record to the key-value store. It lists matches per Bulletin date, the dates missing in the source, and the attribution text.

How much does the EPO patent search cost?

Pay-per-event pricing. You pay per returned publication; platform compute is included.

Event	Price
Patent publication returned	$0.002 per record ($2 per 1,000)

No start fee and no EPO API key. Empty runs and publications skipped in monitor mode cost nothing.

• Prefilled test run (max 20): ≤ $0.04
• Weekly competitor watch with 20 new publications: **$0.04 per week**
• One-off export of 1,000 records: $2

Patent search API: Python, JavaScript, cURL

Python

from apify_client import ApifyClient

client = ApifyClient("<YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN>")
run = client.actor("mabun/epo-patent-search").call(run_input={
    "cpcCodes": ["H01M"], "keywords": ["battery"], "publishedWithinDays": 30,
    "onlyNew": True, "monitorId": "battery-watch"
})
for p in client.dataset(run["defaultDatasetId"]).iterate_items():
    print(p["publicationNumber"], p["titleEn"], p["applicantNames"])

JavaScript

import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client';
const client = new ApifyClient({ token: '<YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN>' });
const run = await client.actor('mabun/epo-patent-search').call({ applicants: ['Siemens'], publicationKinds: 'grants' });
const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems();

cURL

curl -X POST "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/mabun~epo-patent-search/run-sync-get-dataset-items?token=<YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN>" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"keywords":["hydrogen"],"publishedWithinDays":60,"maxResults":20}'

Use with AI agents (MCP)

Add the Actor as a patent tool to Claude, ChatGPT or Cursor via the Apify MCP server: https://mcp.apify.com?tools=mabun/epo-patent-search Example prompt: "Which companies filed European patents on solid-state batteries in the last 60 days? Group them by applicant."

Integrations

• Schedules and webhooks through the Apify platform
• Make, Zapier, n8n, Google Sheets, Slack, Airtable through Apify integrations

FAQ

Do I need an EPO OPS account or API key? No. The Actor uses the EPO's public Linked Open EP Data service, so you only need an Apify account.

Where does the data come from? From the EPO's official Linked Open EP Data SPARQL endpoint, published under CC BY 4.0. Each record carries the attribution source field. If you republish the data, keep the attribution: "Contains data from the European Patent Office, EPO Linked Open EP Data, licensed under CC BY 4.0."

Does it scrape Espacenet or Google Patents? No. It uses only the EPO's open data service. The Espacenet and Register links let you open the full document in your browser.

Does it include DE (DPMA), US or WO documents? No. It covers EP publications only. Priorities and PCT numbers are included as references.

Why are inventors not included? Inventors are natural persons, and the Actor minimizes personal data. Applicants are usually companies. You can still switch them off.

How does monitor mode work? Publication numbers are stored per monitorId in a named key-value store in your own account.

Limitations

• EP documents only, searched by title (no full-text, abstract or claims search)
• CPC for fresh applications: EPO Linked Open Data often has no CPC yet for newly published A1 applications. CPC searches mostly find grants and older applications, so combine CPC with keywords for recent filings. IPC is often empty.
• Update lag and gaps: the linked-data set is refreshed weekly and can lag the Bulletin. The Actor logs a warning for missing Bulletin dates and lists them in RUN-SUMMARY.datesMissingInSource.
• Fair use: the EPO describes the public SPARQL endpoint as a service for occasional use, not a production backend. The Actor therefore requires at least one filter, limits a run to 366 days and 1,000 results, queries one Bulletin date at a time with pauses, and retries politely. Bulk downloads are not supported.
• Legal status, oppositions and fees are not included; check the European Patent Register for these.

Related Actors by the same developer

• EU Tenders Monitor Germany & Austria (TED) – public tenders, same monitor mode
• RSS Feed Monitor – new items from any feed with keyword alerts
• PDF to Text & RAG Chunks – turn research papers and other PDFs into text for LLMs

Support

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