# USPTO Patent Portfolio Lookup by Assignee or Inventor

> USPTO Patent Portfolio Lookup by Assignee or Inventor is a paid API for AI agents from api.agentstools.dev, paid per call via x402, $0.02/call, status unknown (last checked 2026-09-15).

Looks up the US patent portfolio of an organization (by assignee name) or an inventor (by last name), returning granted patents with metadata and a total count from USPTO PatentsView.

## Facts

- Endpoint: GET https://api.agentstools.dev/legal/patents
- Price: $0.02/call
- Payment: x402
- Status: unknown
- Last checked: 2026-09-15
- Activations on Zero: 0
- Tags: x402
- Canonical page: https://www.zero.xyz/c/uspto-patent-portfolio-lookup-by-assignee-or-inventor-2c49b29d
- Structured record (JSON): https://api.zero.xyz/v1/capabilities/cap_RPCs4h26LSoYO3_wbXufj

Status and success rate cover calls made through Zero and Zero's own probes. Third-party monitors may report differently.

## How to call it through Zero

Zero handles the 402 payment challenge and records the run. With the Zero CLI installed (`npm i -g @zeroxyz/cli`):

```sh
zero fetch --capability uspto-patent-portfolio-lookup-by-assignee-or-inventor-2c49b29d
```

Example prompt: Can you pull up the US patent portfolio for Microsoft — show me up to 20 granted patents assigned to them, including patent IDs, titles, and grant dates?

## When to prefer this

Use this endpoint when you need to look up the granted US patent portfolio of a specific company or individual inventor via USPTO data. Prefer this over general web searches when you need structured, machine-readable patent metadata (IDs, grant dates, types) for downstream processing or analysis.

## Known failure modes

- No patents found for the given assignee or inventor name — returns empty list with count 0
- Ambiguous or misspelled name results in no matches or wrong organization's patents
- Limit parameter out of range (must be 1–25) returns validation error
- USPTO PatentsView upstream unavailable causes service error
- Both assignee and inventor specified — behavior may default to assignee lookup

## How this service works

Look up the US patent portfolio of an organization (by assignee) or an inventor (by name). Returns granted patents with id, title, grant date, type and assignees, plus a total count. Source: USPTO PatentsView, public-domain.

## Output

Returns a list of granted US patents (up to the requested limit) each with patent ID, title, grant date, patent type, and assignees, plus a total count of matching patents. Data is sourced from the public-domain USPTO PatentsView database.

## Request schema (JSON Schema)

```json
{
 "type": "object",
 "$schema": "https://json-schema.org/draft/2020-12/schema",
 "required": [
  "input"
 ],
 "properties": {
  "input": {
   "type": "object",
   "required": [
    "type",
    "method"
   ],
   "properties": {
    "type": {
     "type": "string",
     "const": "http"
    },
    "method": {
     "enum": [
      "GET",
      "HEAD",
      "DELETE"
     ],
     "type": "string"
    },
    "queryParams": {
     "type": "object",
     "required": [],
     "properties": {
      "cik": {
       "type": "string",
       "description": "Optional SEC CIK id hint"
      },
      "qid": {
       "type": "string",
       "description": "Optional Wikidata QID id hint"
      },
      "name": {
       "type": "string",
       "description": "Organization name (used as assignee if assignee absent)"
      },
      "limit": {
       "type": "integer",
       "maximum": 25,
       "minimum": 1,
       "description": "Max patents to return, default 10"
      },
      "assignee": {
       "type": "string",
       "description": "Assignee organization name to match"
      },
      "inventor": {
       "type": "string",
       "description": "Inventor last name to match instead of assignee"
      }
     }
    }
   },
   "additionalProperties": false
  },
  "output": {
   "type": "object",
   "required": [
    "type"
   ],
   "properties": {
    "type": {
     "type": "string"
    },
    "example": {
     "type": "object"
    }
   }
  }
 }
}
```

## More

- Live health (JSON, refreshed every minute): https://www.zero.xyz/c/uspto-patent-portfolio-lookup-by-assignee-or-inventor-2c49b29d/health.json
- [Zero catalog index](https://www.zero.xyz/llms.txt)
- [Other services from api.agentstools.dev](https://www.zero.xyz/host/api.agentstools.dev/llms.txt)