PlainPatent

About PlainPatent

Our Mission

PlainPatent exists because patent data — one of the most valuable public records of corporate innovation — is locked behind expensive subscription databases, confusing government interfaces, and dense legal formatting. Researchers, investors, journalists, and job seekers deserve access to this intelligence without needing a patent attorney or a $20,000/year data subscription.

We believe the US Patent and Trademark Office collects this data at public expense, and it should be accessible in a form that real people can use. PlainPatent organizes 3 million+ patent grants from 2015 to 2025 into searchable company profiles, technology landscapes, and innovation rankings — free and without account requirements.

Our approach is data-first and opinion-free. We do not rate companies as "good" or "bad" innovators. We present patent volume, filing velocity, technology breadth, and claim depth as objective metrics and let users draw their own conclusions about competitive positioning and innovation strategy.

Our Data Sources

US Patent & Trademark Office — PatentsView

All patent data on PlainPatent comes from the USPTO PatentsView dataset — a research-grade database maintained by the USPTO in partnership with academic institutions. PatentsView provides disambiguated patent data covering all US utility patents, including assignee (company) information, CPC technology classifications, inventor details, filing and grant dates, and patent claims.

PatentsView is the gold standard for patent analytics because it applies machine-learning name disambiguation models to resolve the many variations of company and inventor names that appear in raw USPTO records. This means that "Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd." and "Samsung Electronics America, Inc." are correctly linked to the same parent entity — a critical requirement for accurate portfolio analysis. Official source: patentsview.org.

How We Process the Data

We download bulk TSV files from PatentsView's public S3 repository and process them through a multi-stage ETL pipeline:

  • Parsing and normalization: We parse patent grant records, assignee data, and CPC classifications from PatentsView's tab-separated files into structured database records.
  • Company profile construction: We aggregate individual patents into company-level profiles, calculating total patent counts, technology distribution across CPC classes, filing velocity trends, and average claim depth.
  • Innovation scoring: We compute a composite innovation score (0-100) for each company based on four dimensions: portfolio volume (40%), filing velocity (20%), technology breadth (25%), and claim depth (15%). Each dimension is normalized independently before weighting.
  • Technology landscape indexing: We organize patents by CPC group and subgroup, identifying which companies lead in each technology area and tracking filing trends over time.
  • Search indexing: Company and technology records are indexed for full-text search, enabling users to find specific companies, technologies, or patent-related terms.
  • Ranking computation: We generate multiple ranking views — by total patent count, by innovation score, by filing velocity, and by technology leadership — so users can compare companies from different analytical perspectives.

Our pipeline runs entirely on structured data from PatentsView. We do not supplement with scraped web content, user-submitted data, or editorial descriptions. Every metric shown on PlainPatent is derived directly from USPTO patent records through the processing steps described above.

The methodology behind our innovation score is documented in detail in our Innovation Metrics Guide. We designed the scoring to be transparent and reproducible — every input is publicly available USPTO data, and the weighting is disclosed.

Data Currency

PlainPatent currently displays patent grant data from the PatentsView 2025 release, covering all US utility patents granted from January 2015 through December 2025. This represents over 3 million individual patent grants across thousands of technology categories.

USPTO PatentsView typically releases updated bulk data on a quarterly basis. There is an inherent lag of several months between patent grant dates and their appearance in the PatentsView dataset due to data processing and disambiguation cycles. We update PlainPatent within 30 days of each new PatentsView release.

Editorial Independence & How Content Is Produced

Content on PlainPatent is compiled by our editorial team from official source data. Raw data from the FBI, U.S. courts, USPTO, and related justice agencies is transformed into readable profiles by our continuous editorial pipeline, then validated against the source before publication. The PlainPatent editorial team, operating under Kiznis Studio, is responsible for editorial standards, methodology, and corrections.

We do not accept payment, sponsorship, or promoted placement from law enforcement agencies, courts, attorneys, or any covered entity. Our only revenue source is contextual display advertising served by Google AdSense — advertisers do not influence which entities we cover or how we present data, and they do not receive preferential placement.

Limitations & Disclaimers

PlainPatent is an informational resource. Patent data should be one factor among many in competitive analysis, investment research, or career decisions. Specific limitations:

  • Utility patents only: PlainPatent tracks US utility patents. Design patents, plant patents, and foreign patents are not included. Companies with significant non-US patent portfolios may appear underrepresented.
  • Grant date lag: Patent data reflects grants, not current R&D activity. There is typically a 2-3 year lag between patent application and grant. Current filing activity is not visible until patents are granted.
  • Disambiguation limitations: While PatentsView applies AI disambiguation, some company names may be incorrectly split or merged, particularly for subsidiaries, joint ventures, or companies that have undergone mergers and name changes.
  • Commercial value unknown: Patent counts and innovation scores measure R&D output, not commercial success. Many patents are filed defensively and never commercialized. A high innovation score does not guarantee business success.

PlainPatent does not provide legal, financial, or investment advice. Patent information should be verified with official USPTO records for any legal or business purpose.

What You Can Do on PlainPatent

PlainPatent is designed for anyone who needs patent intelligence without a subscription or legal background:

  • Competitive Intelligence: Compare patent portfolios across companies to understand who is investing in which technologies. Identify technology races, emerging competitors, and strategic R&D shifts before they appear in product launches or press releases.
  • Technology Research: Explore patent activity by CPC technology class to understand which domains are growing, which are maturing, and where innovation investment is concentrating. Track technology trends across hundreds of categories.
  • Career Research: Investigate potential employers' innovation depth by examining their patent portfolios — what technology areas they invest in, whether they are growing or contracting R&D, and how they compare to competitors.
  • Academic Research: Access standardized patent data for innovation studies, technology forecasting, and competitive analysis research without proprietary database fees.
  • Investor Due Diligence: Verify company claims about technology leadership by examining their actual patent portfolios. Patent data is the most auditable public signal of R&D investment.

Every feature on PlainPatent is free and requires no account. We support our operations through non-intrusive advertising.

Guides and Educational Content

We publish editorial guides that help users interpret patent data effectively — from understanding CPC classification codes to conducting competitive patent analysis. These guides provide context, frameworks, and practical steps that go beyond the raw data available on company and technology pages.

PlainPatent is part of a network of free public data portals. For business and franchise data, see PlainFranchise. For company CEO compensation data, visit PlainCeoPay. For clinical trial data, check PlainTrial.

Contact

Questions, corrections, or feedback? Email us at hello@plainpatent.com.

We welcome questions about data sources or methodology, reports of apparent data errors, suggestions for additional features, and media and research inquiries.

PlainPatent is published by ", a data intelligence company that builds free, public-interest data portals.