Patents
A patent is a time-limited, government-granted right to stop others from making, using or selling an invention. It is published as a document with a unique publication number, such as EP4309228B1, and its legally binding scope lives in its claims. Everything else in the document, i.e. the abstract, the description and the drawings, is there to explain and support those claims.
If you are new to patents, So why patents? What's the deal? explains the reasoning behind them, and the guide to patent numbers shows you how to read a publication number.
Our patent corpus#
Our patent corpus holds every publication of the European Patent Office (EPO) and the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), i.e. the published applications as well as the granted patents. Each one comes with its full text, figures, bibliographic data and legal events, all kept up to date. We normalize the data, so European and US patents read the same way.
In some examples, set forth herein is an electrochemical stack assembly. Generally, an electrochemical stack assembly includes at least one electrochemical stack, a frame, and a laminated pouch.
Publications of other offices, e.g. a Japanese or Korean member of a family, appear in a patent's family and citations, from where you can open them on Espacenet or Google Patents.
Adding patents#
You can simply ask a research agent to find and add patents for you. To do it yourself, click the plus button after the page tabs of your database and choose Patents. That opens the search dialog, where you can search our patent corpus or paste the numbers of the patents you already have in hand.
Searching the corpus#
A good search combines keywords, a description in plain language and filters.
Keywords match exact words. Set a Text filter to contains and it looks for your words anywhere in a patent, or use a Claims filter to look in the claims alone. A trailing * stands in for any ending, so electrolyte* also finds electrolytes.
Plain language finds patents by meaning. Set a Text or Claims filter to similar to and describe the invention in your own words, paste a claim, or attach a PDF or an image, such as a datasheet or a product photo. Patalyze then ranks the patents by how close they come in meaning, which also finds patents that describe the same idea in different words.
Filters#
Filters narrow the search by the structured parts of a patent. You can combine as many as you need, and these are the main ones:
| Filter | Narrows by |
|---|---|
| Text, Claims | Words or meaning, as described above |
| Classifications | CPC codes, where a broad code includes everything beneath it |
| Assignees, Inventors | Who owns the patent and who is named on it |
| Territory, Kind code | The office, EP or US, and the kind of publication, e.g. A1 or B2 |
| Status | Whether a patent is In-force, Pending or Dead |
| Priority date, Publication date | Before, after or between dates |
| Number | Specific publication or application numbers |
For example, a freedom-to-operate search for solid-state cell packaging might combine a Text filter for solid-state and laminated pouch, a Classifications filter for H01M50/124, a Status filter for In-force or Pending patents and a Territory filter for US or EP.
The dialog shows the number of matches as you build your search and previews them in a table underneath. When the list looks right, add the patents and they show up in your database.
Entering publication numbers#
Sometimes you already know exactly which patents you want, e.g. the patents named in an earlier report. In that case add a Number filter and paste in their numbers, such as US11831027B2 or EP4309228B1. A whole list goes in at once.
Reading a patent#
Open a patent and it fills the page as a single document, from the title and the claims down to its family, legal events and citations. Your own attributes and the mappings of the patent sit right under the title.
Claims#
The claims are the numbered, legally binding definition of what a patent protects. A claim is a single sentence made up of elements, and each element is a feature that has to be present for the claim to "read on" a product. Claim 1 stands on its own as an independent claim, and the claims after it can depend on it and narrow it by adding further elements. That structure is exactly what a mapping works on.
1.
2.
Family#
A single invention is rarely filed once. File it in the US, Europe, Japan, China and Korea and you get five publications for one invention. The family ties these publications together, and each member carries its own status, since the same invention can be in force in one country and lapsed in another. For the wider picture, the patent family tree is a good primer.
Classifications#
Every patent is tagged with CPC codes that place it on a shared technology map, such as H01M for a broad area or H01M50/124 for a narrow one. You can search and filter on them to keep a technology in focus, or to find patents that a keyword would miss because they never use your vocabulary.
Legal events and status#
A patent's life is a sequence of events: granted, renewed, assigned to a new owner, opposed, lapsed. Patalyze gathers these events into one timeline, so you can see at a glance whether the patent is alive, who owns it now and what has happened along the way. The status under the title follows from these events. Once a European patent is granted, each of its designated states also has a status of its own.
Register documents#
For European patents, the EPO publishes the file, i.e. the documents exchanged during examination and opposition. Patalyze links them straight from the patent, so you can open an examiner's communication or an opponent's notice on the EPO Register.
Court decisions#
Whether a patent holds up and how far its claims reach is often settled in court. That is why a patent's page lists the court decisions that concern it, e.g. from the EPO's Boards of Appeal, the Unified Patent Court or the German courts.
Citations#
A patent cites the prior art it was examined against, both earlier patents and other literature. You can open a cited patent right from the list. To see which patents in your database cite each other, draw a graph of their citations on a dashboard.
Description#
Behind the claims sits the full description, often tens of pages, where the invention is set out in detail. It is also where the claim language is pinned down. A term that reads as broad in a claim is often narrowed by the examples here, so reading it is part of judging how far a claim really reaches.
The present application relates to enclosures for rechargeable batteries, particularly solid-state lithium batteries.
Solid-state lithium batteries have a number of advantages over conventional lithium batteries that rely solely on liquid-based electrolytes. However, solids by their very nature are less deformable than liquids, making packaging solid-state lithium batteries more challenging.
FIGS. 3A and 3B are cross-sectional diagrams of a laminated pouch that contains a frame and two electrochemical stacks according to an embodiment.
Figures#
Most patents include drawings, and the drawings often carry detail the words skip. Click one and it opens in a window beside the patent, so you can keep a figure open while you read the claims that describe it.
Figure 1
Figure 2A
Figure 2B
Working with a patent#
The buttons above the title open the original PDF next to the patent and download the patent as Excel, Word or PDF. For anything beyond reading, simply ask an agent, e.g. to fill an attribute for your patents or to chart them against a product. To repeat a search on a schedule, e.g. to catch new filings, see Monitoring.
Public patent pages#
Every patent in our corpus also has a public page that anyone can open without an account, at patalyze.com/patent/ followed by its publication number, e.g. patalyze.com/patent/EP4309228B1. Your attributes and mappings stay inside your database and never show there.
Patents in the Data API and MCP#
The Data API runs the same search over the same corpus from your own code. For AI assistants such as Claude or ChatGPT, our MCP servers offer the same search and can also add patents to your database.