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Examples & Use Cases

Real-world scenarios showing what you can do with uspto. Every example runs in a single terminal command.

See What Your Competitors Are Filing

Pull every patent application filed by a company and export it to a spreadsheet:

# Export all of Google's recent filings to CSV
uspto search --assignee "Google" --filed-within 1y --download csv > google_filings.csv

# See what Apple is patenting in machine learning (CPC class G06N)
uspto search --assignee "Apple" --cpc G06N --granted --limit 50

# Track a specific competitor's granted patents over time
uspto search --assignee "Samsung Electronics" --granted-after 2025-01-01 --all -f csv > samsung_2025.csv

Find Prior Art

Search by technology area, keywords, and classification codes to find relevant prior art before filing:

# Search by title keywords
uspto search --title "solid state battery electrolyte" --granted --limit 20

# Narrow by CPC classification
uspto search --cpc H01M10/0562 --filed-within 3y --all

# Search by inventor name across all their filings
uspto search --inventor "Goodenough" --sort filingDate:desc

Read the Actual Patent Text

Extract claims, abstracts, and full specifications from granted patents — no PDF scraping needed:

# Get the claims of a specific patent
uspto app claims 16123456

# Get everything: abstract, claims, citations, full description
uspto app fulltext 16123456

# Just the prior art citations (patent and non-patent references)
uspto app citations 16123456

Download Every Document in a Patent's File History

Get all the PDFs — office actions, responses, drawings, everything the USPTO has on file:

# Read the latest office action directly in the terminal (prefers XML, then DOCX)
uspto app text 16123456 --codes office-action --latest

# Read every matching readable document in one pass
uspto app text-all 16123456 --codes office-action -f json -q

# Download the entire file wrapper (all PDFs)
uspto app download-all 16123456

# Or just see what documents are available first
uspto app docs 16123456

# Download a specific document by index
uspto app download 16123456 3

Trace a Patent Family Tree

Follow the chain of continuations, divisionals, and continuations-in-part to see how a patent family evolved:

# Build the family tree (follows parent/child chains)
uspto family 16123456 --depth 3

# Get the continuity data for a single application
uspto app continuity 16123456

Due Diligence: Get Everything on a Patent

One command pulls together metadata, prosecution history, assignments, continuity, and documents:

# Full application summary (makes 5 API calls, returns unified view)
uspto summary 16123456

# Who owns it? Check assignment/transfer history
uspto app assignments 16123456

# What happened during prosecution?
uspto app transactions 16123456

Monitor PTAB Proceedings

Track inter partes reviews (IPRs), post-grant reviews, and other Patent Trial and Appeal Board activity:

# Find all IPR proceedings against a specific patent
uspto ptab search --type IPR --patent 9876543

# Get details on a specific proceeding
uspto ptab get IPR2023-00001

# Download all IPR decisions to a file
uspto ptab decisions --download csv > ipr_decisions.csv

# Check appeal decisions
uspto ptab appeals "artificial intelligence"

Download Bulk Patent Data

The USPTO publishes weekly data dumps of patent grants, applications, and more:

# See what bulk data products are available
uspto bulk search "patent grant"

# List files in a specific product
uspto bulk files PTGRXML

# Download a specific weekly file
uspto bulk download PTGRXML ipg260101.zip -o ./data/

Export Data for Spreadsheets and Dashboards

Every command can output to CSV for Excel, Google Sheets, or any data tool:

# CSV export for spreadsheet analysis
uspto search --assignee "Tesla" --all -f csv > tesla_portfolio.csv

# Get filing counts by technology area
uspto search --assignee "Microsoft" --facets cpcSectionLabelName -f json

# Export PTAB proceedings
uspto ptab search --type IPR --all -f csv > all_iprs.csv

Let Your AI Agent Do Patent Research

The CLI is designed for AI agents. Any agent that can run terminal commands can use it — Claude Code, Codex, OpenCode, Claw, Goose, or any custom agent:

# Agents get structured output with metadata
uspto search --title "LLM training" -f json --minify --quiet

# Dry-run mode shows the API call without executing (useful for agent planning)
uspto search --assignee "OpenAI" --dry-run

# Exit codes tell agents exactly what happened
# 0=success, 2=bad input, 3=auth error, 4=not found, 5=rate limited

Agents can chain commands together to build complex research workflows — search for patents, pull the full text, trace the family tree, check for PTAB challenges, and export everything to structured data.

Getting Started

  1. Get a free API key at data.uspto.gov (requires one-time ID verification)
  2. Install: go install github.com/smcronin/uspto-cli/cmd/uspto@latest or grab a binary from releases
  3. Set your key: export USPTO_API_KEY=your-key-here
  4. Start searching: uspto search --title "your technology" --limit 5