USPTO Patent + Trademark Intel

USPTO intelligence in eight modes - co-assignee mapping, CPC tech-cluster trends, inventor mobility, expiration calendar, family + citation graphs, trademark watch.

What does USPTO Patent + Trademark Intel do?

It wraps the free PatentsView API and the keyless TSDR trademark API in eight purpose-built modes that pre-compute the relational intelligence buried in 12M+ patents and millions of trademark filings - co-assignee partnerships (M&A / JV signal), inventor mobility (talent flow), CPC tech-cluster YoY growth, expiration calendars, family and citation graphs, and Nice-class trademark watch.

Features

• Co-assignee mapping - every co-owner pair across an assignee's filings, with joint patent count and sample patents.
• Tech-cluster analysis - YoY filing growth per CPC code with top assignees and top inventors.
• Inventor mobility - per-inventor assignee history with date ranges and patent counts.
• Expiration calendar - patents expiring inside a configurable window, sorted soonest-first.
• Family lookup - continuations, divisionals, CIPs, foreign equivalents, reissues.
• Citation analysis - forward + backward citation samples per patent.
• Trademark watch - keyword + Nice-class search with applicant, attorney, status, goods/services.
• Patent search - keyword / assignee / inventor / CPC search returning flat patent records.

Use cases

• IP law firms - competitive landscape briefs, prior-art mapping, freedom-to-operate analyses.
• R&D teams - tracking what competitors are building and with whom.
• VC and corp dev - tech due diligence and acquisition-target spotting via co-assignment graphs.
• Pharma / generics - patent cliff calendar for branded drug expirations.
• Talent intel - inventor mobility flags engineering moves before press releases.
• Brand protection - daily trademark watch in target Nice classes.

FAQ

Q: Is this legal? A: Yes. USPTO patent and trademark records are public by statute. PatentsView, USPTO PEDS, and the USPTO TSDR / TESS systems are all official US-government public-data interfaces. No login is required to read this data.

Q: Do I need a PatentsView API key? A: Yes. PatentsView (the high-quality bulk patent API the actor uses) requires a free API key. Sign up at https://patentsview.org/apis/keyrequest and the key is issued within minutes. Trademark modes use the USPTO's open TSDR endpoints which do not require a key.

Q: Why might a run fail? A: The three most common failure modes are (1) missing or invalid PatentsView API key, (2) PatentsView rate limits (45 requests/minute per key - the actor auto-throttles but very wide assignee searches can still trip it), and (3) overly broad CPC + keyword combinations that exceed PatentsView's 100,000-record-per-query cap - narrow the date window or split by assignee.

Q: How fresh is the data? A: PatentsView refreshes weekly with USPTO grant publications. Trademark TSDR is real-time. Inventor mobility, co-assignee, and tech-cluster modes are computed on the freshest available PatentsView snapshot at run time.

Q: Can I schedule this daily or weekly? A: Yes. Weekly cron aligns with PatentsView's refresh cadence for patent modes. Daily cron makes sense for trademark watch (TSDR updates daily). Quarterly is appropriate for tech-cluster and expiration-calendar landscape briefs. Apify Schedules + dedupe on patent_number or serial_number gives clean deltas.

Q: Does it integrate with my CRM or data tooling? A: Yes. Apify webhooks POST every run to HubSpot, Salesforce, Pipedrive, Apollo, or any HTTP endpoint. Zapier, Make.com, and n8n templates available. Dataset exports as JSON / CSV / Excel / XML for IP-management systems (Anaqua, CPA Global, Patsnap) or BI tools.

Q: How does pricing work? A: PAY_PER_EVENT. You pay per patent / trademark record emitted, with surcharges on the analytical rollups (co-assignee maps, tech-cluster analyses, inventor-mobility timelines). You only pay for what the actor actually emits.

Related Actors

• sec-edgar-intel - cross-reference patent assignees against SEC filings (8-K M&A activity, 13F position changes) to spot IP-driven acquisitions before they're announced.
• court-records-intel - pull every patent litigation case (E.D. Tex., D. Del., N.D. Cal.) for a given assignee to surface ongoing IP disputes.
• b2b-sales-triggers - convert new patent filings, trademark registrations, and inventor-mobility moves into outbound sales triggers.

Integrations

• Zapier - push to HubSpot/Salesforce/Pipedrive/Apollo
• Make.com - workflow automation
• n8n - self-hosted automation
• Apify webhooks - POST to your endpoint
• API + dataset export (JSON/CSV/Excel/XML)
• MCP / AI agents - call from Claude/GPT/LangChain

Modes

Mode	Input	Output
patent_search	keywords, assignees, inventors, CPC	flat patent records
trademark_search	keywords, Nice classes, applicants	flat trademark records
co_assignee_mapping	assignees	every co-owner pair + joint patent count + sample
tech_cluster_analysis	CPC codes or assignees	top CPC clusters, top assignees, top inventors, YoY growth
inventor_mobility	inventor names	per-inventor assignee history with date ranges
expiration_calendar	assignees + CPC codes + window months	patents expiring inside the window, sorted soonest-first
family_lookup	patent numbers	continuations, divisionals, CIPs, foreign equivalents
citation_analysis	patent numbers	forward + backward citation samples

Input

See .actor/INPUT_SCHEMA.json. Sample - find Apple's co-assignment partners since 2018:

{
    "mode": "co_assignee_mapping",
    "patentsview_api_key": "YOUR_KEY",
    "assignees": ["Apple Inc."],
    "date_from": "2018-01-01",
    "max_results": 1000
}

Pharma patent cliff for the next 18 months:

{
    "mode": "expiration_calendar",
    "patentsview_api_key": "YOUR_KEY",
    "cpc_classes": ["A61K"],
    "expiration_window_months": 18,
    "max_results": 1000
}

Output

Sample output: ./.actor/sample-output.json — copy-paste-ready preview of real-looking records.

First record inline:

{
  "mode": "patent_search",
  "scraped_at": "2026-05-13T21:30:08Z",
  "available": true,
  "reason": null,
  "patent_number": "11,884,221",
  "patent_id": "11884221",
  "title": "Adaptive battery thermal management system for EV powertrain",
  "abstract": "An adaptive battery thermal management system that dynamically reroutes coolant flow across battery modules based on per-cell temperature delta and predicted load profile from inverter telemetry...",
  "filing_date": "2022-08-14",
  "grant_date": "2026-04-30",
  "publication_date": "2024-02-22",
  "expiration_date": "2042-08-14",
  "days_to_expiration": 5934,
  "status": "active",
  "assignees": [
    {
      "name": "Lucid Group, Inc.",
      "country": "US",
      "type": "US company"
    }
  ],
  "inventors": [
    {
      "name": "Sara Khoury",
      "location": "Newark, CA, US"
    },
    {
      "name": "Devraj Krishnan",
      "location": "Mountain View, CA, US"
    },
    {
      "name": "Thomas A. Whitlock",
      "location": "San Jose, CA, US"
    }
  ],
  "cpc_codes": [
    {
      "code": "H01M10/63",
      "description": "Cooling means specially adapted for batteries",
      "primary": true
    },
    {
      "code": "B60L58/26",
      "description": "Cooling devices for traction batteries",
      "primary": false
    }
  ],
  "ipc_codes": [
    "H01M10/63",
    "B60L58/26"
  ],
  "application_number": "17/887,142",
  "examiner_name": "Sun, Eugenia",
  "claims_count": 22,
  "independent_claims_count": 3,
  "family_id": "F2208140001",
  "family_members": [
    {
      "patent_number": "EP4408888A1",
      "country": "EP",
      "kind_code": "A1",
      "relation": "foreign-equivalent"
    },
    {
      "patent_number": "CN117220444A",
      "country": "CN",
      "kind_code": "A",
      "relation": "foreign-equivalent"
    }
  ],
  "forward_citations": {
    "count": 4,
    "sample": [
      {
        "patent_number": "12,002,118",
        "assignee": "Rivian Automotive LLC",
        "cited_date": "2026-03-12"
      }
    ]
  },
  "backward_citations": {
    "count": 38,
    "sample": [
      {
        "patent_number": "10,541,448",
        "assignee": "Tesla, Inc.",
        "cited_date": "2020-01-21"
      }
    ]
  },
  "serial_number": null,
  "registration_number": null,
  "mark_text": null,
  "mark_image_url": null,
  "status_code": null,
  "status_date": null,
  "registration_date": null,
  "applicant_name": null,
  "applicant_address": null,
  "attorney_name": null,
  "classes": [],
  "goods_services_description": null,
  "co_assignee_pair": null,
  "inventor_mobility": null,
  "tech_cluster": null
}

One record per patent / trademark / intelligence aggregation. Sample patent record:

{
    "mode": "patent_search",
    "patent_number": "11,000,000",
    "title": "Method and apparatus for ...",
    "filing_date": "2018-06-12",
    "grant_date": "2021-05-11",
    "expiration_date": "2038-06-12",
    "days_to_expiration": 4412,
    "status": "active",
    "assignees": [{"name": "Apple Inc.", "country": "US", "type": "US company"}],
    "inventors": [{"name": "Jane Doe", "location": "Cupertino, CA, US"}],
    "cpc_codes": [{"code": "G06F1/3231", "primary": true}],
    "claims_count": 24,
    "available": true,
    "scraped_at": "2026-05-14T12:00:00Z"
}

Failed lookups still emit a row with available: false and a reason.

Pricing

Pay-per-event:

Event	Price
patent_record	$0.004
trademark_record	$0.004
citation_enrichment (per patent)	$0.005
family_lookup (per patent)	$0.005
intelligence_record (co-assignee pair / inventor profile / cluster)	$0.012

Intelligence aggregations cost more because each row is built from multiple PatentsView queries.

FAQ

Q: Do I need an API key? A: PatentsView is free but key-gated - get one at https://patentsview.org. Paste it into patentsview_api_key. TSDR (trademarks) is keyless.

Q: What's the rate limit? A: PatentsView allows 1000 req/min; the actor stays well below this for any realistic run size.

Q: How is expiration_date computed? A: Estimated as filing_date + 20 years for utility patents. Maintenance-fee lapses, terminal disclaimers, and design-patent terms are not modeled - treat the date as a directional planning input.

Q: Why doesn't tech_cluster_analysis return YoY growth on every CPC? A: YoY growth requires at least two years of filings inside the cluster. Sparse clusters return yoy_growth_pct: null.

Support

Open an issue on the actor's GitHub or contact via Apify Store. Include the run ID and input config.

Changelog

See ./CHANGELOG.md.

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