IP Tools
Give your AI agent access to the world's patent data.
Inside Claude Code:
/plugin marketplace add parkerhancock/ip_tools
/plugin install patent-client-agents@parkerhancock
See docs/installation.md for all seven install modes.
What You Can Do
Ask Claude to research patents in natural language:
"Find Tesla's recent battery patents and summarize the key innovations"
"What's the prosecution history for US Patent 11,234,567?"
"Compare Apple and Samsung's patent portfolios in mobile display technology"
"Track the legal status of EP3456789 across all designated states"
IP Tools connects Claude Code to USPTO, EPO, JPO, and Google Patents, giving your agent the ability to search, analyze, and report on intellectual property worldwide.
Coverage
| Source | What You Get |
|---|
| Google Patents | Global search, full-text, citations, PDFs, families |
| USPTO ODP | Applications, prosecution history, PTAB trials & appeals, petitions, bulk data |
| USPTO Publications | Patent Public Search (PPUBS) full-text search and document retrieval |
| USPTO Assignments | Patent ownership transfers and reel/frame lookups |
| USPTO Office Actions | Rejection analytics, cited references, full-text OA retrieval |
| EPO OPS | European patents, Inpadoc families, legal events, EP Register |
| JPO | Japanese patents, examination history, PCT national phase |
| MPEP | Manual of Patent Examining Procedure search and section lookup |
| CPC | Classification hierarchy lookup, search, and CPC/IPC mapping |
All sources include automatic caching (hishel + SQLite with WAL), rate limiting,
and retry logic via law_tools_core.
Install
For Claude Code users — run these inside a Claude Code session:
/plugin marketplace add parkerhancock/ip_tools
/plugin install patent-client-agents@parkerhancock
Two slash commands (not shell). You get the ip_research skill and
all 63 patent MCP tools. Prereq: uv on
PATH (the MCP server runs under uvx so you don't pip install
anything yourself).
Seven install modes are documented in docs/installation.md
— Python library, Python+MCP runtime, Claude Code plugin, dev symlink, stdio
MCP, Cowork remote MCP, and generic remote MCP. Pick the one that matches
how you'll use it.
API keys
No API key needed: Google Patents, USPTO Publications (PPUBS), USPTO
Assignments, MPEP, CPC.
Quickstart — Python library
pip install patent-client-agents
from patent_client_agents.google_patents import GooglePatentsClient
async with GooglePatentsClient() as client:
patent = await client.get_patent_data("US10123456B2")
print(patent.title)
print(patent.abstract)
results = await client.search_patents(keywords=["machine learning neural network"])
for r in results.results:
print(f"{r.publication_number}: {r.title}")
Detailed Coverage
Google Patents
| Feature | Description |
|---|
| Patent lookup | Fetch by publication number |
| Full-text search | Keyword, assignee, inventor search |
| Claims & description | Full-text content |
| Citations | Forward and backward citations |
| Patent families | Related applications |
| PDF download | Full document PDFs |
USPTO Open Data Portal