Coverage

current to 26 August 2026

These stats are for our local vector database. Search uses additional third-party APIs, and agentic retrieval is exposed to all.

Patents searchable 5,418,327 July 1970 to 26 August 2026
Read end to end 4,784,671 88% of everything held, claims and description
Patent families 3,027,488 distinct inventions, across both offices
Passages indexed 170,203,882 claims, paragraphs and abstracts, indexed one by one

Where the patents come from

OfficePatentsFull text FromToWhat is published
EP European Patent Office 2,901,394 2,270,463 78% December 1978August 2026 Applications as published with their search report, and granted specifications.
US United States Patent and Trademark Office 2,515,208 2,514,208 99.9% March 1971August 2026 Granted patents.

1,725 publications from 45 further offices, including CN, DE, JP, WO and KR, are held where a family member or a citation brought them in. That is not coverage of those offices and should not be read as any.

How far back it goes

1970s110,676
1980s531,968
1990s826,647
2000s1,128,130
2010s1,631,464
2020s1,189,433

The last ten years

2017182,466
2018188,586
2019207,435
2020202,547
2021183,305
2022174,423
2023180,821
2024186,300
2025187,680
202674,357

2026 runs to 26 August and is still filling: a patent is published months after it is filed, so the most recent year is always the thinnest.

What it covers

B Performing operations; transporting2,593,951
F Mechanical engineering; lighting; heating; weapons1,338,277
G Physics: measuring, testing, optics, computing, control994,609
E Fixed constructions: building, mining, drilling468,139

Those four are what the corpus is FOR. Other sections appear as secondary symbols on the same patents, so a search still reaches them where they touch this work: 389,663 publications carry a symbol in H (electricity), 334,256 in C (chemistry and metallurgy), 250,493 in A (human necessities) and 42,386 in D (textiles and paper).

The twenty largest fields

CPCFieldPatents
G01NInvestigating or analysing materials300,849
B29CShaping and joining of plastics141,855
B65DContainers, packaging and storage140,299
B01DSeparation processes129,387
G01RMeasuring electric and magnetic variables121,334
B41JPrinting mechanisms, including ink jet110,574
B60RVehicle parts and fittings103,150
E21BEarth and rock drilling97,138
G01SRadar, sonar and radio navigation88,405
B01JChemical and physical processes, catalysis87,664
F16HGearing79,053
B62DMotor vehicles and trailers77,797
B32BLayered products77,705
B65HHandling thin or filamentary material69,065
F16LPipes, joints and supports64,348
G05BControl and regulating systems64,154
B65GTransport and storage devices62,855
B23KWelding, soldering and cutting by heat61,155
F01DTurbines and non-positive-displacement engines59,033
F16KValves, taps and cocks54,958

5,395,678 of the 5,418,327 publications carry a CPC symbol, so a classification filter or a neighbouring-class search reaches almost all of them.

What is held for each patent the fields behind every result
ClaimsEvery claim as filed, addressable one at a time.
DescriptionThe description, paragraph by paragraph, in the order it was filed.
AbstractAs published.
TitleAs published.
Publication number and kind codeSo a US grant and its EP sibling are never confused.
Publication and filing datesThe filing date is what a date bar is enforced against.
FamilyThe simple family, so one invention filed in two offices reads as one result.
CPC classificationEvery symbol, with the primary one marked.

Where else a search reaches

The corpus above is what we hold. These are the services a search calls when it needs something we do not, and the models that do the reading. Full text is fetched free first and paid last, and the models are separated by what each is good at rather than by who sells them, so one provider being down or out of quota degrades a search rather than stopping it.

EPO Open Patent ServicesOfficial European full text and bibliographic data, straight from the EPO.
USPTO Open Data PortalUS file wrappers, continuity and what the examiner actually said.
EUIPOThe EU design and trade mark registers, for the design side of a search.
Google PatentsFull text and drawings for a publication our corpus does not hold.
PQAIA free prior-art API. US only.
HimmPATChinese, Japanese and Korean full text, in English.
SerpAPIPaid Google Patents. Deliberately last in the order.
ScrapingBeeThe same Google pages through rented addresses when we are blocked.
Voyage AIEmbeds every passage and every query, so a search matches meaning.
Google Vertex AIReads references in full, screens candidates, drafts.
AnthropicClaim construction, and anything that has to be right first time.
OpenAIStands in for the strong tier when another provider is out of quota.
bge-reranker-v2-m3Reranks the candidates on our own hardware. No third party sees the query.