Patent Search API: PatSnap Patents, Legal Status and Families

Search 210M+ patents from 170+ patent offices by keyword query, company or technical text, and pull bibliographic data, legal status and patent families from PatSnap with your own API key, as clean rows you can export to CSV, Excel or JSON.

PatSnap is a patent and R&D intelligence company whose database covers USPTO, EPO, WIPO, CNIPA, JPO and every other major patent authority with a daily refresh. This actor wraps the read endpoints of the PatSnap Open Platform API (the self serve developer platform at open.patsnap.com): Analytics query search, current assignee and original applicant search, semantic similar patent search, simple bibliography, simple legal status and patent family. Use it for prior art and novelty searches, freedom to operate screening, competitor patent portfolio tracking, technology landscaping, IP due diligence, patent family mapping and BI pipelines. Bring your own API key.

BYOK, not live tested: every route, parameter and response field comes from PatSnap's own OpenAPI document (open.patsnap.com/openapi.json) and the Open Platform reference pages, and the routes were probed on 2026-11-02 with an invalid key. The actor has not been run against a live key.

What it does

• Patent search by query: full PatSnap Analytics query syntax (such as TACD: (solid state battery) or ANCS: (Apple, Inc.) AND TACD: (wireless charging)), with stemming, family collapse and sorting by relevance, publication, application or issue date.
• Patents by current assignee: every patent currently owned by one or up to 100 standardized company names.
• Patents by original applicant: every patent originally filed by those companies.
• Semantic prior art search: paste an abstract or invention disclosure and get the most similar patents with a relevancy score, filtered by authority and kind code, publication and filing dates, minimum relevancy and legal status.
• Patent bibliography: title, abstract, patent type, kind code, application, publication and issue dates, current assignees, applicants, inventors, priority claims, CPC, IPC and Locarno classes, cited patents, cited non patent literature and PCT data.
• Simple legal status: active, pending, inactive, undetermined or PCT designated stage for each patent.
• Patent family: simple (DOCDB), INPADOC and PatSnap extended family ids, member publication numbers and member counts.
• Batch lookups: up to 100 patents per request and 5,000 per run, by publication number or PatSnap patent id.
• Read only and pay only for results: empty answers and refused lookups become a free row that says why.

How to get your own key

1. Sign up at open.patsnap.com. PatSnap gives new developers free trial credits; after that the Open Platform bills per call.
2. Create an API key on the API Keys page of the dashboard.
3. Paste it into the PatSnap Open Platform API key field, or set the DATA_API_KEY environment secret. The actor sends it in the documented Authorization: Bearer header.
4. Make sure the API packages you need (patent search, basic patent data) are enabled on your account.

Input

Field	Modes	Notes
mode	all	querySearch, assigneeSearch, applicantSearch, semanticSearch, bibliography, legalStatus, family
apiKey	all	your API key; falls back to the DATA_API_KEY secret
query	querySearch	PatSnap Analytics query, up to 3,000 characters
stemming	querySearch	match plural and tense variants of English keywords
companies	assigneeSearch, applicantSearch	standardized company names, one per line, up to 100 (joined with OR)
collapseType	the three list searches	ALL, APNO, DOCDB, INPADOC, EXTEND
collapseBy, collapseOrder	the three list searches, when collapsing	PBD, APD, AUTHORITY, SCORE; LATEST or OLDEST
sortBy, sortOrder	the three list searches	SCORE, PBDT_YEARMONTHDAY, APD_YEARMONTHDAY, ISD; desc or asc
semanticText	semanticSearch	a technical text; more than 200 words works best
authorities	semanticSearch	authority plus kind code, such as USB, EPB, CNA
publishedFrom, publishedTo, filedFrom, filedTo	semanticSearch	YYYY-MM-DD or YYYYMMDD
minRelevancy	semanticSearch	1 to 100 percent
legalStatuses	semanticSearch	active, pending, inactive, PCT stages, undetermined
patents	bibliography, legalStatus, family	publication numbers such as US11205304B2, or PatSnap patent ids
maxResults	all	stop after this many rows (default 100, at most 20,000; semantic search returns at most 1,000)

Output

A search row:

{
    "mode": "querySearch",
    "recordType": "patent",
    "query": "TACD: virtual reality",
    "found": true,
    "patentNumber": "US11205304B2",
    "patentId": "718ead9c-4f3c-4674-8f5a-24e126827269",
    "title": "Techniques for using multiple symbols to provide feedback for a sidelink transmission",
    "authority": "US",
    "applicationNumber": "US17/521392",
    "applicationDate": "2021-11-08",
    "publicationDate": "2023-08-15",
    "currentAssignee": "QUALCOMM INCORPORATED",
    "originalAssignee": "QUALCOMM INCORPORATED",
    "inventors": ["ELSHAFIE, AHMED", "YANG, WEI", "HOSSEINI, SEYEDKIANOUSH"],
    "relevancy": null,
    "totalResults": 1000
}

A bibliography row (shortened):

{
    "mode": "bibliography",
    "recordType": "bibliography",
    "query": "US11205304B2",
    "found": true,
    "patentNumber": "US11205304B2",
    "patentType": "PATENT",
    "title": "Systems and methods for rendering user interfaces for augmented or virtual reality",
    "abstract": "An augmented reality display system comprises a passable world model data...",
    "authority": "US",
    "kindCode": "B2",
    "currentAssignees": ["MAGIC LEAP, INC."],
    "cpcMain": "G06Q40/025",
    "ipcMain": "G06Q40/025",
    "citedPatents": ["CN203027992U"]
}

Legal status rows carry legalStatus and legalStatuses; family rows carry simpleFamilyId, inpadocFamilyId, patsnapFamilyId, the member publication numbers and their counts. The values above are taken from PatSnap's documentation examples and are illustrative.

Pricing

Pay per event, only for rows with data:

Event	Price
Patent search result (query, assignee, applicant or semantic search)	$0.005
Patent bibliography record	$0.015
Patent legal status	$0.005
Patent family record	$0.01
Empty and refused lookups	free

Your PatSnap Open Platform usage is billed separately by PatSnap in credits. Each search page and each patent in a batch lookup is billed by PatSnap; a small maxResults keeps both costs down.

FAQ

What is the PatSnap Open Platform API?

The PatSnap Open Platform is PatSnap's self serve developer platform. Its REST API at connect.patsnap.com exposes PatSnap's patent database (210M+ patents across 174 jurisdictions) for patent search, patent data, legal data, valuation and AI workflows, with usage based pricing.

Do I need my own PatSnap API key?

Yes. This actor is bring your own key: your API key, your PatSnap credits and your plan. A run without a key ends cleanly with a message and makes no API call.

How do I write a PatSnap Analytics query?

Use field codes such as TACD: (title, abstract, claims, description), ANCS: (standardized current assignee) and ANS: (standardized original applicant), combined with AND, OR and NOT. PatSnap documents the full syntax at analytics.patsnap.com/search_helper.

What is the difference between the assignee and applicant searches?

The current assignee search finds patents a company owns today, including ones it acquired. The original applicant search finds patents the company filed itself, including ones it has since sold.

Can I do prior art or novelty searches?

Yes. The semantic search mode compares your technical text to the patent database and returns the most similar patents with a relevancy percentage, up to 1,000 per search. It is a search aid, not a legal opinion.

Which legal status values come back?

PatSnap's simple legal status: Active, Pending, Inactive, Undetermined, PCT designated period and PCT designated expiration.

Why did my run stop with "not on your plan"?

The Open Platform enables APIs by package. If your account does not include the search or patent data API a mode calls, PatSnap refuses it and the run ends cleanly, naming the API.

What do I pay?

$0.005 per search result or legal status, $0.01 per family record and $0.015 per bibliography record. Empty and refused lookups are free.

Keyword map

patent search API, patent data API, prior art search, semantic patent search, patent legal status, patent family, INPADOC family, patent bibliography, CPC and IPC classification, assignee patent portfolio, PatSnap, PatSnap Open Platform, Eureka, freedom to operate, patent landscape, USPTO EPO WIPO CNIPA patents.

Routes and verification

Mode	Route	Probe with invalid key (twice)
Patent search by query	POST /search/patent/query-search-patent/v2	HTTP 200 JSON status false, 67200202 apikey auth error
Current assignee search	POST /search/patent/current-search-patent/v2	from the OpenAPI document
Original applicant search	POST /search/patent/company-search-patent/v2	from the OpenAPI document
Semantic search	POST /search/patent/semantic-search-patent/v2	from the OpenAPI document
Bibliography	GET /basic-patent-data/simple-bibliography	HTTP 200 JSON status false, 67200202 apikey auth error
Legal status	GET /basic-patent-data/simple-legal-status	from the OpenAPI document
Patent family	GET /basic-patent-data/patent-family	from the OpenAPI document
Invented control routes	GET /basic-patent-data/simple-bibliography-invented-xyz; GET /nonexistent-root-xyz	67200202 inside a real service prefix; HTTP 404 67200101 Path Not Found at the root

The gateway checks the key before it routes inside a service prefix, so an invalid key cannot tell a real leaf path from an invented one; every leaf path here is copied from the OpenAPI document. The key goes in the documented Authorization: Bearer header, never in a URL or a log line.

Licensing and data use

This actor works only with your own PatSnap Open Platform API key, and your agreement with PatSnap applies. For self serve Open Platform accounts that is the Patsnap Eureka Terms of Service (eureka.patsnap.com/terms-of-service), which the Open Platform links as its terms; enterprise customers are governed by their own contract with PatSnap. Those terms license API responses and other outputs for your internal or personal purposes only. You must not resell, sublicense, redistribute, republish, publish at scale, create derivative datasets from or otherwise commercially exploit the data without PatSnap's written permission, and you must keep your API key confidential and within your plan's limits. The terms say that sending outputs to a third party application or integration, such as this actor and its dataset, is at your own risk. Keep the rows for your own research and decisions and do not resell or republish them. This actor is not affiliated with or endorsed by PatSnap.