PTAB Trials Scraper — USPTO IPR & PGR Decisions API

Track Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) AIA trials through USPTO's official Open Data Portal (ODP) API — inter partes review (IPR), post-grant review (PGR), covered business method (CBM) and derivation (DER) proceedings, with normalized parties, patent, status and key dates. Or fetch each trial's decision documents (institution decisions, final written decisions) joined with their proceeding context.

This is the data layer behind commercial PTAB analytics products — institution monitoring, petitioner/patent-owner tracking, final-written-decision alerting — as clean flat JSON you can query, export or pipe into your own analysis. Bring your own free USPTO API key.

• Official API only — api.uspto.gov, the ODP successor of USPTO's retired developer.uspto.gov PTAB API. This Actor deliberately does not scrape P-TACTS (ptacts.uspto.gov), whose FAQ prohibits bulk automated access.
• Rate-limit compliant — USPTO's published limits (burst 1, no parallel calls per key) are enforced; all requests are serialized.

Input

Field	Type	Default	Description
usptoApiKey (required)	string (secret)	—	Your free USPTO ODP API key, sent as X-API-KEY only to api.uspto.gov. How to get one takes a few minutes.
mode	string	"proceedings"	"proceedings" = one record per trial. "decisions" = one record per decision document, enriched with proceeding context (one extra API call per matched trial — slower on broad searches).
trialNumber	string	(empty)	Look up one trial, e.g. "IPR2024-00123". When set, every other filter is ignored.
query	string	(empty)	Free-text query passed to the USPTO search API. Ignored when trialNumber is set.
proceedingTypes	array (multi-select)	(empty = all)	Any of IPR, PGR, CBM, DER.
statusCategory	string	(empty)	Exact USPTO status category, e.g. "Institution Granted", "Institution Denied", "Final Written Decision". Free text — USPTO publishes no closed list; run once unfiltered and read statusCategory values back.
patentNumber	string	(empty)	Only trials challenging this US patent (digits only, e.g. "10701173").
patentOwnerName	string	(empty)	Patent owner as recorded by USPTO (exact-name matching — prefer query when unsure).
petitionerName	string	(empty)	Petitioner real party in interest as recorded by USPTO (same exact-name caveat).
filedFrom / filedTo	date	(empty)	Accorded-filing-date range (both modes filter on the trial's filing date).
onlyNewSinceLastRun	boolean	false	Only push records not seen in previous runs — see Delta mode. Skipped records are not billed.
maxItems	integer	100	Hard cap on records pushed per run (1–10000).

What PTAB data does this scraper extract?

One flat JSON record per proceeding ("recordType": "proceeding"):

Field	Meaning
id	Stable id — the trial number
recordType	"proceeding"
source	"uspto-odp-ptab"
trialNumber	e.g. IPR2024-00123
proceedingType	IPR / PGR / CBM / DER
statusCategory	USPTO trial status category
patentNumber	Challenged US patent
patentOwner	Patent owner name
petitioner	Petitioner real party in interest
petitionerCounsel / patentOwnerCounsel	Counsel names where recorded
inventorName	Inventor(s) where recorded
applicationNumber	Underlying application number
grantDate	Patent grant date (YYYY-MM-DD)
technologyCenter / artUnit	USPTO tech center / group art unit
petitionFilingDate / accordedFilingDate	Petition / accorded filing dates
institutionDecisionDate / institutionDate	Institution decision / institution dates
finalDecisionDate	Final decision (termination) date
lastModified	USPTO last-modified stamp
apiUrl	Direct ODP API URL for this trial
parseConfidence	0.0–1.0 — drops when core fields are missing upstream
warnings	List of normalization warnings (empty when clean)
isNew	true on every pushed record — only present in delta mode

One flat JSON record per decision document ("recordType": "decision"): id (trialNumber:documentIdentifier), recordType, source, trialNumber, proceedingType, decisionType, decisionOutcome, claimsChallenged, claimsFoundUnpatentable, decisionDate, documentIdentifier, documentName, documentUrl (PDF download URI), plus proceeding context copied in (statusCategory, patentNumber, patentOwner, petitioner, accordedFilingDate), apiUrl, parseConfidence, warnings. Decision-detail fields (decisionType, decisionOutcome, claims fields) are extracted defensively from the newer ODP decisions payload and are null with a warning when USPTO omits them — never fabricated.

How to track PTAB trials with this Actor

1. Paste your USPTO API key (free — see FAQ).
2. Pick what to fetch: trial-level proceedings or document-level decisions.
3. Filter by proceeding type, patent number, patent owner, petitioner, status or filing-date range — or set trialNumber for a single docket.
4. Turn on Only new since last run and schedule it to watch for new petitions against a patent portfolio or fresh final written decisions.
5. Run and export JSON, CSV or Excel — or call it over the API:

from apify_client import ApifyClient

client = ApifyClient("<YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN>")
run = client.actor("nomad-agent/ptab-trials-scraper").call(run_input={
    "usptoApiKey": "<YOUR_USPTO_API_KEY>",
    "mode": "proceedings",
    "proceedingTypes": ["IPR"],
    "petitionerName": "Apple Inc.",
    "filedFrom": "2025-01-01",
    "maxItems": 100,
})
for item in client.dataset(run["defaultDatasetId"]).iterate_items():
    print(item["trialNumber"], "|", item["statusCategory"], "|",
          item["patentOwner"])

curl -X POST \
  "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/nomad-agent~ptab-trials-scraper/run-sync-get-dataset-items?token=<YOUR_APIFY_TOKEN>" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"usptoApiKey": "<YOUR_USPTO_API_KEY>", "mode": "proceedings", "patentNumber": "10701173", "maxItems": 50}'

Output example

Illustrative proceeding record (field structure is exact; values shown are examples):

{
  "id": "IPR2025-00123",
  "recordType": "proceeding",
  "source": "uspto-odp-ptab",
  "trialNumber": "IPR2025-00123",
  "proceedingType": "IPR",
  "statusCategory": "Institution Granted",
  "patentNumber": "10701173",
  "patentOwner": "Example Patent Holdings LLC",
  "petitioner": "Example Technology Inc.",
  "petitionerCounsel": "J. Smith",
  "patentOwnerCounsel": "A. Jones",
  "inventorName": "R. Doe",
  "applicationNumber": "15123456",
  "grantDate": "2020-06-30",
  "technologyCenter": "2600",
  "artUnit": "2645",
  "petitionFilingDate": "2025-01-14",
  "accordedFilingDate": "2025-01-15",
  "institutionDecisionDate": "2025-07-20",
  "institutionDate": "2025-07-20",
  "finalDecisionDate": null,
  "lastModified": "2026-06-30T05:12:44",
  "apiUrl": "https://api.uspto.gov/api/v1/patent/trials/proceedings/IPR2025-00123",
  "parseConfidence": 1.0,
  "warnings": []
}

Delta mode (monitoring)

Turn on Only new since last run (onlyNewSinceLastRun) and the Actor remembers every record id it has already returned (proceeding: trial number; decision: trialNumber:documentIdentifier) in a named key-value store that persists across runs.

• Already-seen records are not pushed and not billed.
• Every pushed record is tagged "isNew": true.
• Schedule the same search daily to get only newly filed petitions, newly instituted trials or newly entered decisions — the exact workflow PTAB analytics subscriptions charge for.

Integrations

Export results as JSON, CSV or Excel, or wire this Actor into Make, Zapier or n8n; call it programmatically with run-sync-get-dataset-items; or use it from AI agents via the Apify MCP server.

Pricing

Pay per event: $0.05 per Actor start and $0.004 per record returned. 100 proceedings ≈ $0.45. No subscription — pay only for what you fetch. Your USPTO API key itself is free (USPTO does not charge for ODP access).

Use cases

• Monitor new IPR/PGR petitions against your (or a competitor's) patent portfolio
• Alert on institution decisions and final written decisions as they enter
• Build institution-rate and outcome datasets by petitioner, owner, tech center or art unit
• Feed litigation-finance, licensing and prior-art workflows with structured PTAB dockets
• Self-serve alternative to seat-priced PTAB analytics subscriptions

FAQ

Is it legal to scrape this data? Yes. This Actor calls USPTO's official, documented Open Data Portal API with your own key. PTAB records are US-government works in the public domain. It never touches the P-TACTS web UI, whose FAQ discourages bulk automated access — the ODP API is USPTO's designated machine-access route, including bulk use.

How do I get a USPTO API key? Free, a few minutes: create a USPTO.gov account at https://account.uspto.gov/profile/create-account, then open MyODP at https://data.uspto.gov/myodp (first login walks you through identity verification via ID.me) and copy your API key. Paste it into usptoApiKey — Apify stores it encrypted.

Why do I get "Unauthorized"/"Forbidden"? 401 = key missing, 403 = key invalid/not yet active. Check the key in your MyODP page; new keys can take a few minutes to activate.

How fresh is the data? Every run hits the live ODP API. USPTO ingests PTAB filings continuously; lastModified on each record carries USPTO's own stamp.

Does it cover ex parte appeals or interferences? Not yet — this Actor covers AIA trials (IPR/PGR/CBM/DER). The ODP appeals and interferences endpoints are separate; open an issue if you need them.

Why are some decision fields null? USPTO's decisions payload does not carry every analytic field for every document. Missing values are null and listed in warnings — never guessed. parseConfidence summarizes record completeness.

Something broken or missing? Open an issue on the Actor's Issues tab — it is monitored and fixes ship fast.