USPTO Patents Scraper (Open Data Portal)

Scrape US patent applications and grants from the official USPTO Open Data Portal (ODP) — no browser, just an official API key. Returns clean, structured JSON for IP research, prior-art searches, competitive intelligence and RAG.

Retargeted 2026-08-01. The old PatentsView-based version is dead — search.patentsview.org no longer resolves at all, and its own reference client was archived upstream. This version targets the live replacement, USPTO's Open Data Portal.

What you get per record

• application_number — USPTO application number
• invention_title
• application_type — e.g. Utility, Design, Plant, Reissue
• status — current application status
• filing_date
• grant_date — absent if not yet granted
• patent_number — absent if not yet granted
• first_inventor, first_applicant
• inventors, applicants — full lists
• cpc_classifications
• docket_number, examiner_name
• url — Google Patents link if granted, else USPTO Patent Center link
• scraped_at

ODP covers applications, not only granted patents — an application that hasn't granted yet still returns a full record, just with grant_date/patent_number unset.

Get your API key (required — bigger step than it used to be)

As of June 18, 2026, the USPTO Open Data Portal requires signing in with a full USPTO.gov account with mandatory multi-factor authentication just to request a key — this is no longer a "get a key by email in 5 minutes" flow. From August 18, 2026, four additional profile fields also become mandatory on that account.

1. Create a USPTO.gov account (with MFA) if you don't have one.
2. Request an Open Data Portal key at https://data.uspto.gov/apis/getting-started.
3. Paste it into the apiKey input. It is sent only as the X-API-KEY header and is never written to the dataset.

Input

Field	Required	Description
apiKey	yes	Your USPTO ODP API key
keyword	no	Match applications whose invention title contains this phrase
applicantName	no	Applicant/company name as filed
inventorName	no	Inventor name
applicationType	no	e.g. Utility, Design, Plant, Reissue
dateFrom	no	Grant date on/after YYYY-MM-DD
dateTo	no	Grant date on/before YYYY-MM-DD
maxResults	no	Max records (1–100, default 25)

At least one of keyword, applicantName, inventorName or applicationType must be supplied.

Example input

{
  "apiKey": "YOUR_USPTO_ODP_KEY",
  "keyword": "machine learning",
  "applicationType": "Utility",
  "maxResults": 25
}

Example output row

{
  "application_number": "17123456",
  "invention_title": "Machine learning system for ...",
  "application_type": "Utility",
  "status": "Patented Case",
  "filing_date": "2021-06-01",
  "grant_date": "2022-11-15",
  "patent_number": "11500000",
  "first_inventor": "Jane Doe",
  "first_applicant": "International Business Machines Corporation",
  "inventors": ["Jane Doe", "John Smith"],
  "applicants": ["International Business Machines Corporation"],
  "cpc_classifications": ["G06N20/00"],
  "docket_number": "IBM-12345",
  "examiner_name": "Smith, A.",
  "url": "https://patents.google.com/patent/US11500000",
  "scraped_at": "2026-08-01T00:00:00.000Z"
}

Pricing

Pay per record delivered. Empty results and failed runs are never charged.

Run on a schedule

Apify Console → this Actor → Schedules → Add schedule → pick a cadence (e.g. weekly) → Save. It reruns with the same input automatically.

Data source

Official USPTO Open Data Portal (https://api.uspto.gov). This actor is not affiliated with or endorsed by the USPTO.