Patent Search Skill

This skill points Claude at the BigQuery patent-search tools registered by the patent-creator MCP server. Call the tools directly; do not shell out to Python.

When to use

Find prior art by keyword, classification, or family.
Pull full patent records (title, abstract, claims, description) for US patents.
Cross-reference an EP/WO patent into its US family member to get full text.

Available MCP tools

Tool	What it does
`search_patents_bigquery`	Keyword search across abstract / title / claims (US only for claims).
`get_patent_bigquery`	Full patent details by publication number.
`search_patents_by_cpc_bigquery`	Search by CPC classification prefix.
`search_patents_by_ipc_bigquery`	Search by IPC classification prefix (good for older or non-US patents).
`search_patent_family_bigquery`	All publications sharing a family ID across jurisdictions.
`check_bigquery_status`	Verify auth and quota project before a long workflow.

Cost notes

BigQuery on-demand pricing is $6.25 / TiB (1 TiB free per month). The MCP server enforces a per-query bytes-billed ceiling, defaulting to 350 GiB. Override via PATENT_BIGQUERY_MAX_BYTES_BILLED if you need a larger scan window.

Choosing keywords

2-3 keywords work better than long phrases (BigQuery LIKE matching is literal).
For non-US patents, claims is empty in the dataset; the MCP keyword tool already searches title/abstract for those jurisdictions. For full text on EP/WO, use the EPO OPS tools instead.
Use search_patent_family_bigquery to bridge from an EP/WO hit to its US family member when you need claims.

Common workflows

Prior art sweep:

search_patents_bigquery(query=…, country="US") — broad scan.
Pick the top hits' CPC codes from get_patent_bigquery.
search_patents_by_cpc_bigquery(cpc_code=…) — pull adjacent technology.

Cross-jurisdiction lookup:

search_patents_bigquery(query=…, country="EP").
For any EP hit, get_patent_bigquery to get its family_id.
search_patent_family_bigquery(family_id=…) to find the US member with full claims.