Research and reading · SearchApi

patents.search

Searches structured patent records and retrieves the original document details. Dates, status, inventor and assignee fields are reported as source observations, not legal validity opinions.

Operation: POST /v1/capabilities/patents.search/execute
operationId: executePatentsSearch
Typical credits: 4
Search deadline: 40 s server-side
Paging: page
Availability: ConfiguredChecked 2026-09-23 21:02 UTC

Cost basis: $0.004 per provider search or fresh detail request. Availability is reported per deployment by GET /v1/catalog (available). The timestamped snapshot describes configuration, not provider uptime or your account's enabled choices. Check the catalog with your own key before a call. Credits are explained under credits and limits.

Request

Body of POST /v1/capabilities/patents.search/execute, JSON, validated against the PatentsSearchRequest component of the public OpenAPI document. Defaults are applied server-side, so an omitted optional field behaves exactly as its default.

Request fields of patents.search
Field	Type	Required	Default	Constraints and description
query	string	yes		min length 1, max length 500
num	integer	no	10	min 1, max 25
countries	string[]	no		min items 1, max items 20, unique items
status	"GRANT" \| "APPLICATION"	no
patent_type	"PATENT" \| "DESIGN"	no
inventor	string	no		min length 1, max length 250
assignee	string	no		min length 1, max length 250
before	string	no		pattern ^(?:(?:priority\|filing\|publication):)?[0-9]{8}$ YYYYMMDD, optionally prefixed by priority:, filing:, or publication:.
after	string	no		pattern ^(?:(?:priority\|filing\|publication):)?[0-9]{8}$ YYYYMMDD, optionally prefixed by priority:, filing:, or publication:.
sort	"relevance" \| "new" \| "old"	no

Unknown keys are rejected with 400 invalid_request.

Rules the schema cannot express

Checked after schema validation; violations return 400 invalid_request with a plain message.

before and after must be real calendar dates in YYYYMMDD form.

Examples

Inventions

curl

curl -s -X POST https://api.powerups-ai.store/v1/capabilities/patents.search/execute \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $AIPA_API_KEY" -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"query":"battery recycling","num":5}'

No recorded response is published for this capability yet. The envelope is the ExecuteResponse component (see sessions and records); the record keys below are what the adapter emits. A first call with the example above returns search_id, the records and the charge.

Result record

Every item in results[] carries record_id and title (contract, always present) and usually url and snippet. The keys below are the documented tier: produced deterministically by this capability, omitted when the source has no value, checked against recorded source fixtures in our test suite, and published as the PatentsSearchRecord component (all optional, extra keys allowed) so generated clients type them. The wire schema itself still validates only the base keys. See stability tiers.

Record keys of patents.search
Key	Type	Presence
publication_number	string	always
priority_date	string	when the source has it
filing_date	string	when the source has it
publication_date	string	when the source has it
inventor	string	when the source has it
assignee	string	when the source has it
language	string	when the source has it
pdf	string	when the source has it
source	string	always

Follow-ups

Paging: Provider page number; more fetches the next page from the source. Send { "search_id": "…", "action": "more" } while has_more is true; tolerate an empty page and stop after a bounded number of pages.
Update: Re-run with changed parameters (merged into the stored query); page state resets, search_id stays. Params accept any subset of the request fields (PatentsSearchUpdateParams).
Record actions:
- details: Patent abstract, claims and citations when supplied by the source.
Detail behaviour: First details call fetches from the provider (billed as stated); repeats are cached and free. details is a fresh patent request: $0.004; repeated calls are cached.

record action

curl -s -X POST https://api.powerups-ai.store/v1/follow-up \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $AIPA_API_KEY" -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"record_id":"rec_…","action":"details"}'

Record detail objects of this capability are provider-shaped: documented by observation, not by schema. Full follow-up semantics: follow-up.

Typed client

With types generated from the public document (see types, client and samples) the call is path-keyed and the body is checked at compile time:

TypeScript (openapi-fetch)

const { data, error } = await client.POST("/v1/capabilities/patents.search/execute", {
  body: {
    "query": "battery recycling",
    "num": 5
  },
});
if (error) throw new Error(`${error.error.code}: ${error.error.message}`);
for (const record of data.results) console.log(record.record_id, record.title);