Connect your AI to the patent offices.And to your IP management system.
Live, verbatim data from the offices straight into your chatbot and your agents. Self-hosted in your network, with your own office keys. Nothing in between.
What it is
Somebody had to connect these worlds.
Built to enterprise standards.
IP data lives with the patent offices and in your IP management system. Your AI lives in your chatbot and your agents. Patent Connector is the infrastructure between them, built to meet the requirements of corporations and international law firms.
Your AI
Claude, ChatGPT, Copilot, an internal chatbot or your own agents, connected over MCP or a plain JSON API. Running on your LLM provider or your own hardware.
Patent Connector
One server, shipped as a Docker image or a single binary. Read-only. Your credentials, encrypted. SSO.
The sources
Patent offices via their official APIs, using your keys. Data partners using your own token. Your IPMS, read-only.
- EPO
- USPTO
- DPMA
- EUIPO
- JPO
- IP Australia
- TIPO
- INPI
- Global Dossier
- PRS
- Lens
- Your IPMS
No database in between. No delay, no modification.
The offices, directly
Worldwide bibliographic data, families and legal status through EPO OPS, plus direct connections to the national offices for full text, register events, file wrappers, trademarks and designs. Official APIs only, as current as the office itself.
Your IPMS
Deadlines, files, correspondence, internal references: your own IP joins the same conversation. Read-only, on your premises. PatOrg is live in production; other systems on request.
Intelligence partners
Patent intelligence on top of the office data, with your own token. The Lens adds calculated legal status, citation networks and scholarly literature for non-patent prior art. More providers are joining as official partners, and some are already available on request.
Your AI, your choice
MCP for any chatbot or agent framework. A plain JSON API with an OpenAPI spec for your own software. A CLI for scripts and coding agents. Your LLM provider, or a model on your own hardware.
Why
Most office APIs are free.
Why pay for another wrapper?
The market is full of AI products that resell tokens and prescribe a process. Patent Connector does the opposite: it brings the data to the AI you already run, and leaves the process to you.
Pay for infrastructure, not tokens.
The offices hand out API access for free. Patent Connector uses your keys, so what you pay for is the connection layer and its maintenance: a flat fee, not per request and not per token. No one in between resells your usage.
Why send it to a cloud at all?
Nothing about patent research requires a third party. Run the connector in your network, pair it with your own model, and no query, no file and no client name leaves the building.
You know how an FTO should run.
Prior-art search, freedom to operate, monitoring, portfolio review: your firm knows these processes best. Tell your chatbot. Design your agent. Give it the data. That last part is ours.
What it is not
Infrastructure.
Not AI magic.
Enterprise
Made for large organisations.
Audited by them.
Patent Connector went through the vendor audits of large corporations before rollout: cyber security, data protection and privacy, and accessibility. It passed, and it is in production at Fortune 500 companies and international law firms. Thousands of professionals use the hosted service. Listed in the ChatGPT app directory and certified as a Microsoft connector for Copilot Studio and Power Platform.
- Self-hostedDocker image or single binary. SQLite bundled, MySQL optional. Built-in TLS with automatic certificates, or run it behind your proxy.
- Single sign-onMicrosoft Entra ID out of the box, generic OIDC for Keycloak, ADFS and Authentik. Admin roles follow your groups.
- Your credentialsOffice keys encrypted at rest. One firm-wide service account with central key rotation, or keys per user.
- Read-onlyNothing is filed, changed or stored beyond the request. Only published data, plus your own IPMS.
- AdministrationUser management, offboarding, IP allowlists for the dashboard, optional audit logging, update notifications by email.
- MaintainedOffices change their APIs without notice. We track every change and ship updates continuously, with direct support.
Pricing
Flat. Per organisation.
Sized to your company, unlimited users, setup and support included. Pricing is not published; you get a quote within a day. A free trial is easy to arrange: we spin up a server, work with your IT department, and talk to your security team, works council or whoever else needs to sign off.
The public service at patent.dev, with your own office keys. The Patent CLI is free as well and connects to the hosted service. This instance is shared by many users, so the offices rate-limit it as a single client.
The same binary runs as your own server inside your network, with your own dedicated office quota. Flat fee per organisation, SSO and Global Dossier file wrappers included. Cancel monthly.
Your IPMS, document stores or additional data providers. Scoped with your IT, built for your installation and versions, and delivered with documentation.
FAQ
Questions from IT and IP.
How do we connect our chatbot?
Point it at your Patent Connector endpoint. Claude, ChatGPT, Copilot and every MCP-capable client connect in one step and discover the tools themselves. Your own software uses the JSON API, described by an OpenAPI spec. Users sign in with SSO and connect once.
Which offices and which data?
Worldwide bibliographic data, families and legal status via EPO OPS. Direct connections to the USPTO, DPMA, EUIPO, JPO, IP Australia, TIPO and INPI for search, full text, register and prosecution events, file wrappers, PTAB, trademarks and designs, to the extent each office provides them. Global Dossier adds EP, JP, KR and CN file wrappers. Classification schemes and examination manuals are built in. Only published data; your unpublished matters come in through the IPMS connection.
What do we need to run it?
A Linux host with Docker, or the single binary. SQLite is bundled, MySQL is optional, TLS is built in. The offices issue API credentials free of charge. A first deployment takes an afternoon, and setup help is included in the license.
Can we run a trial first?
Yes, free of charge and without obligation. We spin up a server for you or help your IT set one up, connect your assistants, and answer questions from your security team, works council or whoever else needs to sign off. If it fits, the trial instance becomes the licensed one.
Which LLM does it use?
None of its own. You connect the assistant your firm has approved, or a model running on your own hardware. Fully self-hosted setups involve no third party at all.
Can you connect our IP management system?
Yes. PatOrg is in production, including document stores. Other systems and additional data providers are integrated as a project together with your IT. Connections are read-only and run on your premises.
Does any data pass through patent.dev?
Not in a self-hosted deployment. Your instance talks to the offices you configure, with your credentials. The only outside contact is the license check, which carries no query data. Nothing is stored beyond the request, and nothing is used for training.
How does pricing work?
The hosted service and the CLI are free. Self-hosting is licensed: a flat fee per organisation, sized to your company, unlimited users, cancel monthly. IPMS connections are delivered as projects. Ask, and you will have a quote within a day.
Why not let the model search Google Patents?
A parsed web page is not the register. Patent Connector queries the office's own API and returns the structured record with the source named, as current as the office itself. That is the professional approach, and an honest one.
Who is behind it?
Funktionslust GmbH in Munich, a software company with years of experience connecting IP data services and working with patent offices and IP software vendors. You talk directly to the engineers who build and maintain it. The work is documented publicly at patent.dev.
Give your agents the data.
Tell us which offices, which assistants and which systems you use. You get a concrete answer, not a sales deck, and a trial server if you want one.
Funktionslust GmbH, Munich. +49 (0) 89 997 409 100