Global Patent & IP Enforcement Actions Monitor — Apify Store Overview

Actor: stefano_seggio/actor-21-patent-ip-enforcement-monitor (ID: fTvz8lwj3F1FrPQfM) Store URL: https://apify.com/stefano_seggio/actor-21-patent-ip-enforcement-monitor Version: 1.1

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Executive Summary & Business Use Case

The Global Patent & IP Enforcement Actions Monitor extracts adversarial patent-dispute proceedings from the USPTO Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB), via the USPTO Open Data Portal's PTAB Trials search endpoint (api.uspto.gov/api/v1/patent/trials/proceedings/search), and can optionally enrich or extend that with a EPO Open Patent Services (OPS) opposition-family legal-status watch for a caller-supplied list of European patent publication numbers. The USPTO source returns real Inter Partes Review, Post-Grant Review, Covered Business Method, and Derivation proceedings — the actual mechanism by which one party challenges the validity of another party's granted patent before a U.S. administrative tribunal — newest-filed-first, with petition/institution/decision dates, the challenged patent and application numbers, and the identities of the patent owner, the petitioner, and their counsel. The EPO source is watchlist-driven by design: OPS has no bulk "recent oppositions" search, only a per-publication-number legal-status lookup, so a caller supplies the EP publication numbers they care about (epWatchlist) and the actor reports any legal event recorded against them. Both sources are bring-your-own-key: a free USPTO.gov account with mandatory MFA for the ODP key, and a free developers.epo.org account with a registered App for the OPS OAuth2 client credentials — the actor never attempts to create either account on the operator's behalf.

Three concrete, domain-grounded use cases follow directly from what this data actually contains. First, in-house or outside patent litigation counsel representing a patent owner can run the actor on a schedule with onlyNew enabled to catch the moment a new IPR/PGR petition is filed against one of their patents — recipient_or_defendant_name carries the patent owner's name, entity_identifier_native the challenged patent number, and institutionDecisionDate (mapped to effective_date_iso) is the real signal that PTAB formally instituted the trial rather than merely received a petition. Second, a petitioner-side IP strategy or competitive-intelligence team can filter trialTypeCodes to just IPR and dateRange to a recent window to track newly filed challenges against a competitor's patent portfolio by technology center (technologyCenterNumber), building a live view of where validity challenges are concentrating. Third, patent prosecution counsel or an in-house European IP team managing a portfolio of EP publications can populate epWatchlist with the numbers they're responsible for and get alerted the instant OPS records a new opposition-related legal event against any of them, without manually polling the EPO's own systems.

What this actor deliberately does not claim is equally grounded in the real data: neither PTAB proceedings nor EPO legal-status events carry a monetary amount, so value_native, value_currency, and value_usd_normalized are always null rather than fabricated — an IPR/PGR/CBM/DER dispute's real stakes are a patent's validity, not a dollar figure, and this actor's documentation says so explicitly instead of forcing a fine/penalty framing onto a domain that has none.

Technical Features & V2 Architecture Highlights

This actor ships with named key-value-store cross-run delta persistence. Per its own input_schema.json, the onlyNew flag (default false) "persists seen record ids and a status fingerprint between runs (in this actor's own key-value store) and skips records whose status is unchanged since the prior run." In practice, that means a uspto_ptab trial is tracked by its trialNumber and an epo_opposition event by a composed publicationNumber:eventCode:eventDate key, so re-running the actor on a schedule only surfaces genuinely new or changed activity instead of re-delivering everything every time.

The real event_type values this actor emits are SANCTION, UPDATED, TERMINATED, and SNAPSHOT_NO_DIFF — confirmed identically in both dataset_schema.json and README.md — which is a deliberately different vocabulary from the generic NEW_LISTING/UPDATED/CLOSED pattern used elsewhere in this actor fleet:

• SANCTION — first time this proceeding (PTAB) or legal event (EPO) has ever been seen.
• UPDATED — a previously-seen record's status, latest decision date, or (for EPO) event code/date changed since it was last seen.
• TERMINATED — PTAB-only, and more specific than a generic UPDATED: this trial's terminationDate transitioned from unset to set since it was last seen, i.e. the trial genuinely concluded between runs. A trial that is already terminated the very first time it's observed is reported as SANCTION, not TERMINATED, because there is nothing to transition from on a first sighting.
• SNAPSHOT_NO_DIFF — identical to the prior run; only re-emitted when onlyNew is false, and skipped from delivery entirely when onlyNew is true.

There is no CLOSED event anywhere in this actor, and EPO opposition events carry no equivalent terminal signal at all — per the README, "a new eventCode on a watched publication IS itself the point of that record, not a status field to diff against," so TERMINATED is intentionally scoped to uspto_ptab only.

The onlyNew boolean is the actor's delta-mode switch, and its own schema description is explicit about the billing-relevant behavior: when enabled, it "skips records whose status is unchanged since the prior run" — an unchanged record is never pushed to the dataset at all, not pushed as a SNAPSHOT_NO_DIFF record for $0.

On the output schema itself: the normalized envelope (src/schemas.ts#UnifiedRecordSchema) is confirmed to be exactly an 18-field Unified Master Schema (UMS) — record_id, event_type, scraped_at, is_new, source_url, recipient_or_defendant_name, entity_identifier_native, value_native, value_currency, value_usd_normalized, effective_date_iso, publish_date_iso, category_or_type, status_or_estado, awarding_or_regulating_agency, jurisdiction, source_document_url, reference_number — every source-agnostic field null-honest per record (e.g. value_usd_normalized is always null, since neither PTAB nor EPO carries a monetary figure to normalize). dataset_schema.json documents this UMS envelope alongside a source discriminator and the full set of raw, source-specific fields preserved from each origin (18 raw PTAB fields such as trialNumber, trialStatusCategory, patentOwnerName; 5 raw EPO fields such as publicationNumber, eventCode) — so a uspto_ptab record carries all 18 PTAB-specific fields populated and all 5 EPO-specific fields null, and vice versa for epo_opposition.

Two more source-specific engineering facts worth surfacing: the USPTO PTAB search endpoint is confirmed live with real rate limits (burst = 1, 4–15 req/s, 5,000,000 calls/week shared across all ODP metadata-retrieval endpoints), and src/sources/usptoPtab.ts flattens the raw proceeding response via flattenProceeding(). And a competing source, USPTO PatentsView, was live-checked and confirmed down/mid-migration as of 2026-09-07 with no committed relaunch date — and per the README it "never covered disputes/enforcement anyway, only grants/applications," so it would not have served this actor's brief even if live. WIPO PATENTSCOPE was likewise confirmed live but excluded because its programmatic/bulk access is a paid, CHF-priced commercial product, not an open API. Neither omission is a gap in coverage; both are documented, verified decisions.

A standalone MCP tool manifest also ships in this package (mcp/searchPatentEnforcement.ts) — a JSON-RPC tool declaration with a zod inputSchema, a jsonSchema derived via zodToJsonSchema, and a handler, not wired into any external registry but ready to register. And per the README's compliance note, there is no CAPTCHA-solving, fingerprint spoofing, or WAF/OAuth-gate bypass anywhere in the codebase — both live sources require registered, publisher-sanctioned API access (a USPTO ODP account with MFA; EPO OAuth2 client credentials), which is exactly why both are BYOK inputs rather than an embedded operator key.

Input Schema & JSON Configuration Example

Field	Type	Default	Description
sources	array (enum, select)	["uspto_ptab"]	uspto_ptab = real USPTO PTAB Trial proceedings (IPR/PGR/CBM/DER), newest-filed-first, via the USPTO Open Data Portal. epo_opposition = EPO Open Patent Services opposition-family legal-status watch for a caller-supplied list of EP publication numbers (epWatchlist). Both require the matching credential fields below (BYOK) -- see this actor's README/src/http.ts for the live-verified access requirements of each.
usptoOdpApiKey	string (secret)	—	Required when sources includes uspto_ptab. Bring-your-own-key: obtain a free key from a USPTO.gov account (MFA required) at https://data.uspto.gov/myodp -- this actor never attempts to create that account on your behalf. Never logged or persisted beyond this run.
epoOpsConsumerKey	string (secret)	—	Required when sources includes epo_opposition. From a free developers.epo.org account + registered App (OAuth2 client-credentials flow). Never logged or persisted beyond this run.
epoOpsConsumerSecret	string (secret)	—	Paired with epoOpsConsumerKey. Never logged or persisted beyond this run.
epWatchlist	array (string list)	[]	Required when sources includes epo_opposition -- EPO OPS has no bulk 'recent oppositions' search, only a per-publication-number legal-status lookup, so this actor is watchlist-driven for that source. Example: "EP3000000".
trialTypeCodes	array (enum, select)	[]	Filters uspto_ptab results by trialMetaData.trialTypeCode. Leave empty for all four: Inter Partes Review (IPR), Post-Grant Review (PGR), Covered Business Method (CBM), Derivation (DER).
dateRange	string (enum, select)	—	Optionally restricts uspto_ptab results to proceedings whose petitionFilingDate falls within this window (applied server-side as an ODP rangeFilter). Does not affect epo_opposition, which is watchlist-driven. Allowed values: 24h, 7d, 30d, 90d.
maxItemsPerSource	integer	100	Hard cap on how many records to return per selected source this run (applied independently to uspto_ptab and epo_opposition).
onlyNew	boolean	false	When enabled, persists seen record ids and a status fingerprint between runs (in this actor's own key-value store) and skips records whose status is unchanged since the prior run. A first-seen record is emitted as event_type SANCTION; a previously-seen record whose status/decision fields changed is emitted as UPDATED; a uspto_ptab record whose terminationDate newly became set since it was last seen is emitted as the more specific TERMINATED instead. Recommended for recurring monitoring.

{
  "sources": ["uspto_ptab", "epo_opposition"],
  "usptoOdpApiKey": "YOUR_USPTO_ODP_API_KEY",
  "epoOpsConsumerKey": "YOUR_EPO_OPS_CONSUMER_KEY",
  "epoOpsConsumerSecret": "YOUR_EPO_OPS_CONSUMER_SECRET",
  "epWatchlist": ["EP3000000", "EP3500000"],
  "trialTypeCodes": ["IPR", "PGR"],
  "dateRange": "30d",
  "maxItemsPerSource": 50,
  "onlyNew": true
}

Output Dataset Sample & Data Dictionary

Unified Master Schema (UMS) fields — present on every record, source-agnostic:

Field	Type	Description
source	string	uspto_ptab or epo_opposition — which of the two sources produced this record.
record_id	string	trialNumber (uspto_ptab) or a composed publicationNumber:eventCode:eventDate key (epo_opposition) - stable across runs.
event_type	string	SANCTION (first seen), UPDATED (status/decision changed since last run), TERMINATED (uspto_ptab only - the trial's terminationDate transitioned from unset to set since it was last seen, a more specific signal than a generic UPDATED), or SNAPSHOT_NO_DIFF (unchanged, re-emitted because onlyNew=false).
scraped_at	string	ISO-8601 timestamp of this extraction.
is_new	boolean	true if not seen in a prior run (delta mode).
source_url	string | null	Public case-viewer URL for this record; null for both sources in this actor (no verified per-record public page URL for either uspto_ptab or epo_opposition — an honest null rather than a fabricated link).
recipient_or_defendant_name	string | null	Patent Owner / Defendant — for uspto_ptab, the patent owner under adversarial challenge; always null for epo_opposition (OPS legal-status data doesn't carry the owner's name in this actor's scope).
entity_identifier_native	string | null	Native Entity Identifier — the challenged patentNumber (uspto_ptab) or the watched publicationNumber (epo_opposition).
value_native	string | null	Value (native) — always null; neither source carries a monetary amount.
value_currency	string | null	Value Currency — always null; neither source carries a monetary amount.
value_usd_normalized	number | null	Value (USD) — always null; neither source carries a monetary amount to normalize.
effective_date_iso	string | null	Effective Date — institutionDecisionDate (falling back to accordedFilingDate) for uspto_ptab; eventDate for epo_opposition.
publish_date_iso	string | null	Publish Date — petitionFilingDate for uspto_ptab; eventDate for epo_opposition.
category_or_type	string | null	Category / Type — trialTypeCode (IPR/PGR/CBM/DER) for uspto_ptab; eventCode for epo_opposition.
status_or_estado	string | null	Status — trialStatusCategory for uspto_ptab; eventDescription for epo_opposition.
awarding_or_regulating_agency	string | null	Regulating Agency — constant "USPTO Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB)" or "European Patent Office (EPO) -- Legal/Opposition Division".
jurisdiction	string	US or EP.
source_document_url	string | null	Source Document URL — fileDownloadURI for uspto_ptab; always null for epo_opposition (OPS is a data API, not a public document store).
reference_number	string | null	Reference Number — trialNumber for uspto_ptab; publicationNumber for epo_opposition.

USPTO PTAB fields — populated only when source = uspto_ptab, null otherwise:

Field	Type	Description
trialNumber	string | null	PTAB Trial Number, e.g. IPR2024-00123.
trialTypeCode	string | null	Trial Type: IPR / PGR / CBM / DER.
trialStatusCategory	string | null	Trial Status.
petitionFilingDate	string | null	Petition Filing Date.
accordedFilingDate	string | null	Accorded Filing Date.
institutionDecisionDate	string | null	Institution Decision Date.
latestDecisionDate	string | null	Latest Decision Date.
terminationDate	string | null	Termination Date.
trialLastModifiedDateTime	string | null	Trial Last Modified.
fileDownloadURI	string | null	Document Download URI.
patentNumber	string | null	Challenged Patent Number.
applicationNumberText	string | null	Application Number.
patentOwnerName	string | null	Patent Owner Name.
patentOwnerRealPartyInInterestName	string | null	Patent Owner Real Party in Interest.
petitionerRealPartyInInterestName	string | null	Petitioner Real Party in Interest.
petitionerCounselName	string | null	Petitioner Counsel.
inventorName	string | null	Inventor Name.
technologyCenterNumber	string | null	Technology Center.

EPO OPS fields — populated only when source = epo_opposition, null otherwise:

Field	Type	Description
publicationNumber	string | null	EP Publication Number.
eventCode	string | null	Legal Event Code.
eventDescription	string | null	Legal Event Description.
eventDate	string | null	Legal Event Date.
eventCountry	string | null	Legal Event Country.

Sample record (uspto_ptab, a first-seen IPR proceeding under delta mode):

{
  "source": "uspto_ptab",
  "trialNumber": "IPR2026-00842",
  "trialTypeCode": "IPR",
  "trialStatusCategory": "Instituted",
  "petitionFilingDate": "2026-03-14",
  "accordedFilingDate": "2026-03-14",
  "institutionDecisionDate": "2026-09-02",
  "latestDecisionDate": "2026-09-02",
  "terminationDate": null,
  "trialLastModifiedDateTime": "2026-09-02T00:00:00Z",
  "fileDownloadURI": "https://api.uspto.gov/api/v1/patent/trials/proceedings/IPR2026-00842/documents/1120345/download",
  "patentNumber": "10,987,654",
  "applicationNumberText": "16/123,456",
  "patentOwnerName": "Meridian Semiconductor Corp.",
  "patentOwnerRealPartyInInterestName": "Meridian Semiconductor Corp.",
  "petitionerRealPartyInInterestName": "Northgate Devices Inc.",
  "petitionerCounselName": "Harlow & Voss LLP",
  "inventorName": "Chen, Wei-Ming",
  "technologyCenterNumber": "2800",
  "publicationNumber": null,
  "eventCode": null,
  "eventDescription": null,
  "eventDate": null,
  "eventCountry": null,
  "record_id": "IPR2026-00842",
  "event_type": "SANCTION",
  "scraped_at": "2026-09-08T14:22:07.481Z",
  "is_new": true,
  "source_url": null,
  "recipient_or_defendant_name": "Meridian Semiconductor Corp.",
  "entity_identifier_native": "10,987,654",
  "value_native": null,
  "value_currency": null,
  "value_usd_normalized": null,
  "effective_date_iso": "2026-09-02",
  "publish_date_iso": "2026-03-14",
  "category_or_type": "IPR",
  "status_or_estado": "Instituted",
  "awarding_or_regulating_agency": "USPTO Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB)",
  "jurisdiction": "US",
  "source_document_url": "https://api.uspto.gov/api/v1/patent/trials/proceedings/IPR2026-00842/documents/1120345/download",
  "reference_number": "IPR2026-00842"
}

Multi-language Integration Snippets

cURL

curl "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/stefano_seggio~actor-21-patent-ip-enforcement-monitor/run-sync-get-dataset-items?token=$APIFY_TOKEN" \
  -X POST \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "sources": ["uspto_ptab"],
    "usptoOdpApiKey": "YOUR_USPTO_ODP_API_KEY",
    "trialTypeCodes": ["IPR", "PGR"],
    "dateRange": "30d",
    "maxItemsPerSource": 50,
    "onlyNew": true
  }'

Python (apify-client)

from apify_client import ApifyClient

client = ApifyClient("YOUR_TOKEN")

run_input = {
    "sources": ["uspto_ptab"],
    "usptoOdpApiKey": "YOUR_USPTO_ODP_API_KEY",
    "trialTypeCodes": ["IPR", "PGR"],
    "dateRange": "30d",
    "maxItemsPerSource": 50,
    "onlyNew": True,
}

run = client.actor("stefano_seggio/actor-21-patent-ip-enforcement-monitor").call(run_input=run_input)

for item in client.dataset(run["defaultDatasetId"]).iterate_items():
    print(f"[{item['event_type']}] {item['trialNumber']} - {item['recipient_or_defendant_name']}")

Node.js (apify-client)

import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client';

const client = new ApifyClient({ token: process.env.APIFY_TOKEN });

const runInput = {
    sources: ['uspto_ptab'],
    usptoOdpApiKey: 'YOUR_USPTO_ODP_API_KEY',
    trialTypeCodes: ['IPR', 'PGR'],
    dateRange: '30d',
    maxItemsPerSource: 50,
    onlyNew: true,
};

const run = await client.actor('stefano_seggio/actor-21-patent-ip-enforcement-monitor').call(runInput);

const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems();

for (const item of items) {
    console.log(`[${item.event_type}] ${item.trialNumber} - ${item.recipient_or_defendant_name}`);
}

Pricing Model Explanation

This actor is pay-per-event, with platform usage included:

Event	Price	What it means here
result	$0.002 / record	Charged once per dataset item pushed. There is no second, cheaper tier for this actor — the USPTO PTAB Trials search endpoint returns full proceeding metadata (dates, patent/application numbers, patent-owner and petitioner party data) in a single call, and the EPO OPS legal-status lookup likewise returns the full legal event for a watched publication number in one call. Neither source has a "listing-only" response that this actor later has to fetch details for, so there is no lighter-weight/heavier-weight split to price differently — every record that reaches the dataset, from either source, costs the same.
apify-actor-start	$0.00005 / run	Charged once per run, regardless of how many sources are selected or how many records are returned.

Delta mode and billing: when onlyNew is set to true, the actor persists a status fingerprint per record in its own named key-value store and only pushes dataset items for records it classifies as SANCTION (first seen), UPDATED (status/decision changed), or TERMINATED (a PTAB trial's terminationDate newly became set). A record that is already known and unchanged is never delivered at all — it is not pushed as a SNAPSHOT_NO_DIFF record and then charged at $0, it is simply never created as a dataset item in the first place, so it is never a chargeable result event. That is what makes scheduling this actor for recurring monitoring economical: re-running it against the same PTAB search or the same EP watchlist on a schedule only bills for genuinely new petitions, status changes, or terminations — not for reconfirming proceedings that haven't moved.

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Sources for this overview: .actor/actor.json, .actor/input_schema.json, .actor/dataset_schema.json, README.md, src/schemas.ts, and src/umsNormalizer.ts from the actor's real repository at C:\Users\Stef\apify-portfolio\actor-21-patent-ip-enforcement-monitor. No CHANGELOG.md exists at this actor's root (only inside node_modules dependencies, which are third-party and not this actor's own); V2/UMS architecture detail came from README.md's "Unified Master Schema (UMS)" and "Delta mode" sections plus src/schemas.ts/src/umsNormalizer.ts directly instead.