Last updated: April 23, 2026
These Terms of Use ("Terms") are a binding agreement
between you and Patent Client, LLC, a Texas limited liability company
("Patent Client," "we,"
"us," or "our"), the operator of
the service available at
mcp.patentclient.com (the "Service"). By
accessing or using the Service — whether through the web interface, by
issuing an access token, or by making requests through a Model Context
Protocol (MCP) client — you agree to be bound by these Terms. If you do
not agree, do not use the Service.
The Service is a free, public demonstration that exposes patent and intellectual-property data to MCP-compatible clients. It proxies requests to public and third-party data sources including the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) Open Data Portal, USPTO Public Search, the European Patent Office (EPO) Open Patent Services, Google Patents, the Manual of Patent Examining Procedure (MPEP), the Cooperative Patent Classification (CPC) system, and the Japan Patent Office (collectively, "Upstream Sources"). The Service may add, change, or remove Upstream Sources at any time.
The Service is provided for evaluation and research purposes. It is not a production-grade product and is not covered by any service-level agreement. We may modify, suspend, or discontinue the Service — in whole or in part, including any feature, functionality, data source, endpoint, access path, or your access to any of the foregoing — at any time, in our sole discretion, with or without notice, and without liability to you or any third party. We have no obligation to maintain the Service, to preserve any data or configuration associated with your account, or to provide any advance warning of changes.
The Service does not provide legal advice and does not create an attorney–client relationship. Patent data surfaced by the Service is informational only and is not a substitute for professional legal counsel. You should not act, or refrain from acting, on the basis of information obtained from the Service without consulting a qualified attorney. Patent grants, publications, prosecution histories, and classifications reflect the records of their issuing offices at the time they were retrieved and may be inaccurate, incomplete, or out of date. We make no representation that any information retrieved through the Service is current or authoritative, and we disclaim all liability for decisions made in reliance on it.
You must be at least 18 years old and able to form a binding contract to use the Service. The Service is offered only to users located in the United States; users outside the United States access it at their own risk and are responsible for compliance with local law.
Access requires authentication through Google Sign-In. By signing in, you authorize us to receive your verified email address and basic profile information from Google solely to identify your account. You are responsible for maintaining the confidentiality of any access token issued to you. Access tokens are personal to the account that minted them and may not be shared, resold, or used to circumvent rate limits. We may disable any account or access token at any time, in our sole discretion, for any reason, including suspected violation of these Terms.
The Service enforces per-account rate limits, measured in response bytes returned, to keep the demonstration available to all users. The default limits are displayed on your tokens page and may change from time to time without notice. Exceeding your limit results in temporary deferral of further requests until the applicable window refills.
If your use case requires higher rate limits, a service-level commitment, private data sources, or a commercial license, contact pypatent2018@gmail.com for enterprise licensing. Enterprise terms are separately negotiated and supersede these Terms to the extent of any conflict.
Subject to these Terms, we grant you a limited, revocable, non-exclusive, non-transferable, non-sublicensable license to access the Service and to use data retrieved through it for your own patent-research, legal-research, or educational purposes. Data originating from Upstream Sources remains subject to the terms of service, copyright, and licensing of those sources; your use must comply with those terms as well as these Terms.
You agree that you will not:
The Service, including its code, user interface, documentation, and the selection, arrangement, and presentation of data surfaced through it, is owned by Patent Client and its licensors and is protected by United States and international intellectual-property laws. Nothing in these Terms grants you any right, title, or interest in the Service other than the limited license set out in Section 6.
Underlying patent and technical data retrieved from Upstream Sources is the property of, and licensed from, those sources. Patent Client does not claim ownership of that underlying data and disclaims any warranty as to its accuracy, completeness, currency, or fitness for any purpose.
The Service depends on Upstream Sources and on infrastructure providers (including Google Cloud Platform) that operate under their own terms. We are not responsible for any act, omission, outage, or policy change of any third party, and any remedy you may have in connection with a third party lies against that third party, not Patent Client.
You acknowledge and agree that no information you submit to or transmit through the Service is confidential, privileged, or protected. We may log, store, analyze, and disclose any request you make — including tool names, query parameters, identifier inputs, and resulting responses — for any purpose consistent with operating, securing, improving, defending, or discontinuing the Service, or as required by law. We undertake no obligation to encrypt, segregate, anonymize, or restrict internal access to that information beyond what we determine appropriate in our sole discretion.
Do not submit privileged, client-confidential, attorney work-product, trade-secret, or otherwise sensitive information through the Service. Use of the Service does not create an attorney–client relationship (see Section 3), and you expressly waive any claim that your submissions are protected by the attorney–client privilege, the work-product doctrine, or any other duty of confidentiality owed by us to you. If the confidentiality of your research matters to your work, use a private deployment or obtain an enterprise license (Section 5); do not use this public Service.
Information passing through the Service may be observed, processed, or retained by third-party infrastructure providers (including Google Cloud Platform and Cloudflare) and by the Upstream Sources to which we proxy requests; those parties operate under their own terms and retention practices, which we do not control. We may disclose information associated with your use of the Service in response to legal process, subpoena, or government request; to enforce these Terms; to protect the rights, property, or safety of Patent Client, our users, or others; or in connection with any investigation of suspected abuse. We may provide such disclosure without prior notice to you except where required by law.
With respect to the limited categories of personal information we collect to operate the Service — your Google email address and profile information, a SHA-256 hash of any access token you mint, and request metadata such as timestamps and response sizes — we do not sell that information and retain it only for as long as reasonably necessary for the purposes described above.
You may stop using the Service at any time, and you may revoke your access tokens from the tokens page. We may suspend or terminate your access — with or without notice and in our sole discretion — for any reason, including violation of these Terms, suspected abuse, inactivity, or cessation of the Service itself. Sections 3, 7, 8, 12, 13, 14, 15, and 17 survive termination.
TO THE FULLEST EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW, THE SERVICE AND ALL CONTENT RETRIEVED THROUGH IT ARE PROVIDED "AS IS" AND "AS AVAILABLE," WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, WHETHER EXPRESS, IMPLIED, STATUTORY, OR OTHERWISE. PATENT CLIENT AND ITS LICENSORS, CONTRACTORS, AND AGENTS SPECIFICALLY DISCLAIM ALL WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, TITLE, NON-INFRINGEMENT, ACCURACY, AND AVAILABILITY. WE DO NOT WARRANT THAT THE SERVICE WILL BE UNINTERRUPTED, SECURE, OR ERROR-FREE, THAT DEFECTS WILL BE CORRECTED, OR THAT ANY DATA RETRIEVED WILL BE ACCURATE, COMPLETE, OR CURRENT.
TO THE FULLEST EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW, IN NO EVENT WILL PATENT CLIENT, ITS AFFILIATES, OR ITS OR THEIR RESPECTIVE OFFICERS, DIRECTORS, EMPLOYEES, CONTRACTORS, AGENTS, OR LICENSORS BE LIABLE FOR ANY INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, CONSEQUENTIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR PUNITIVE DAMAGES, OR FOR ANY LOSS OF PROFITS, REVENUE, DATA, USE, GOODWILL, OR OTHER INTANGIBLE LOSSES, ARISING OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH YOUR USE OF — OR INABILITY TO USE — THE SERVICE, WHETHER BASED IN CONTRACT, TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE), STRICT LIABILITY, OR ANY OTHER THEORY, AND WHETHER OR NOT PATENT CLIENT HAS BEEN ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES.
TO THE FULLEST EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW, THE AGGREGATE LIABILITY OF PATENT CLIENT AND ITS AFFILIATES FOR ALL CLAIMS ARISING OUT OF OR RELATING TO THESE TERMS OR THE SERVICE WILL NOT EXCEED ONE HUNDRED U.S. DOLLARS ($100). YOU ACKNOWLEDGE THAT THE SERVICE IS PROVIDED FREE OF CHARGE AND THAT THIS CAP REFLECTS AN ALLOCATION OF RISK APPROPRIATE TO A NO-FEE DEMONSTRATION.
Some jurisdictions do not allow the exclusion or limitation of certain damages; in those jurisdictions, the foregoing limitations apply to the fullest extent permitted.
You agree to defend, indemnify, and hold harmless Patent Client and its affiliates, officers, directors, employees, contractors, agents, and licensors from and against any claim, demand, loss, liability, damage, cost, or expense (including reasonable attorneys' fees) arising out of or relating to your use of the Service, your violation of these Terms, your violation of any law or third-party right, or your misuse of any data obtained through the Service.
These Terms and any dispute arising out of or relating to them or the Service are governed by the laws of the State of Texas, without regard to its conflict-of-laws principles. The exclusive venue for any suit, action, or proceeding is the state or federal courts located in Harris County, Texas, and you irrevocably consent to the personal jurisdiction of, and waive any objection to venue in, those courts.
We may revise these Terms from time to time. The most current version will be posted on this page with the "Last updated" date above. Your continued use of the Service after changes become effective constitutes your acceptance of the revised Terms. If you do not agree to a change, you must stop using the Service.
These Terms constitute the entire agreement between you and Patent Client regarding the Service and supersede all prior or contemporaneous communications, whether oral or written. If any provision is held invalid or unenforceable, the remainder will remain in full force. Our failure to enforce any right or provision is not a waiver of that right or provision. You may not assign or transfer these Terms without our prior written consent; we may assign these Terms without restriction. These Terms do not create a partnership, joint venture, agency, or employment relationship between you and Patent Client.
For questions about these Terms, contact pypatent2018@gmail.com. For enterprise licensing inquiries, including higher rate limits, private data sources, or commercial use, use the same address with the subject line "Enterprise licensing inquiry."