USPTO PTAB Trial Tracker — IPR / PGR / CBM API

Turn the USPTO Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) AIA-trial docket into a clean, structured feed. Search inter partes review (IPR), post-grant review (PGR), covered business method (CBM) and derivation (DER) proceedings by party, patent, type or date — then go beyond a flat dump with three transforms:

• Delta mode — only the new petitions since a date or since your last run (a ready-made new-IPR alert).
• Graph mode — a petitioner ↔ patent-owner edge list (or per-party rollup) so you can see who is challenging whom.
• Institution-rate score — instituted / decided per petitioner or patent owner, the number litigators actually care about.

Data comes straight from the USPTO Open Data Portal (ODP) PTAB Trials API (api.uspto.gov). Official, first-party, no scraping.

Who it's for

• Patent litigators & PTAB practitioners — monitor new petitions against a client's patents; benchmark a petitioner's institution rate before filing.
• IP-risk & competitive-intelligence analysts — track which competitors are attacking which portfolios.
• NPE / licensing & patent-monetization teams — spot patents under AIA challenge and gauge validity risk.
• Litigation-finance & insurance underwriters — score institution likelihood across a book of patents.

You need a free USPTO ODP API key

The USPTO decommissioned the old keyless PTAB API on 2026-01-06. The current ODP API is free but key-gated. Register in a few minutes (video ID verification) at https://data.uspto.gov/apis/getting-started, then paste the key into the apiKey field. It is sent only to api.uspto.gov as the X-API-KEY header.

Example input

{
  "apiKey": "YOUR_FREE_USPTO_ODP_KEY",
  "mode": "search",
  "proceedingType": "IPR",
  "sinceDate": "2025-01-01",
  "maxResults": 500
}

New-petition alert (schedule it daily):

{ "apiKey": "YOUR_FREE_USPTO_ODP_KEY", "mode": "delta", "proceedingType": "IPR", "sinceDate": "2026-06-01" }

Institution-rate leaderboard by petitioner:

{ "apiKey": "YOUR_FREE_USPTO_ODP_KEY", "mode": "graph", "graphBy": "petitioner", "proceedingType": "IPR", "maxResults": 2000 }

Output fields (search / delta)

Field	Description
proceeding_number	PTAB trial number (e.g. IPR2024-00001)
proceeding_type	IPR / PGR / CBM / DER
subproceeding_type	Raw USPTO trialTypeCode
filing_date	Petition filing date (YYYY-MM-DD)
status	USPTO trial status category
institution_decision	instituted / denied / pending / unknown
institution_decision_date	Date institution decision issued
petitioner	Petitioner (challenger) real party in interest
patent_owner	Patent owner / respondent
patent_number	Challenged patent number
inventor	Named inventor
technology_center	USPTO technology center
source_url	Canonical ODP API URL for the proceeding
retrieved_at	Fetch timestamp (ISO 8601)

Output fields (graph mode)

petitioner, patent_owner, proceeding_count, instituted_count, denied_count, pending_count, institution_rate (0–1, instituted / decided).

Use as an MCP tool

This actor is callable by AI agents (Claude, Cursor, etc.) via mcp.apify.com. The input and every output field are described in the schema, so an agent can chain it: resolve a patent or company, pull its PTAB trials, then compute the institution rate — no glue code.

FAQ

How do I get a USPTO PTAB API key? Free at https://data.uspto.gov/apis/getting-started (a few minutes, one-time video verification). Paste it into apiKey.

What is a PTAB IPR institution rate? The share of a petitioner's (or patent owner's) trials that were instituted out of those decided (instituted + denied). Graph mode computes it per party.

Can I monitor new IPR petitions automatically? Yes — run mode: "delta" on a schedule; the actor keeps a rolling seen-set and emits only newly filed petitions.

How do I find every PTAB trial against a patent? Set patentNumber (e.g. US9876543B2) in search mode.

Which proceedings are covered? AIA trials: IPR, PGR, CBM, and derivation (DER). Appeals and interferences are separate USPTO datasets.

Is this official data? Yes — first-party USPTO Open Data Portal PTAB Trials API, no scraping.