USPTO Patent File Wrapper Search - Created by A. Ong

Privacy Policy

This is a free, non-commercial tool for searching publicly available U.S. patent, ex parte reexamination, and PTAB (Patent Trial and Appeal Board) trial data from the USPTO Open Data Portal, for monitoring specific applications, for viewing and downloading file-wrapper and PTAB documents, and for browsing reexamination and PTAB analytics (reexamination determinations, pre-order SNQ submissions, post-order patent owner petitions, and office action timing; and PTAB final written decisions, discretionary and institution decisions, and per-proceeding dockets). It also offers optional daily email alerts about ex parte reexamination activity and PTAB decisions (reexamination determinations, office actions, certificates, and petitions; PTAB discretionary and institution decisions; and PTAB final written decisions). It displays no advertising and is not operated for profit. This policy explains what limited information the site handles.

1. No accounts, no tracking

• There are no user accounts and no logins — you don't create credentials or provide identity to use the site.
• The site uses no advertising and sets no tracking or marketing cookies. We do not build profiles of visitors or track you across other websites.
• To understand overall traffic, the site uses Vercel Web Analytics, a privacy-focused, cookieless analytics tool. It measures only aggregate information — such as page views, referring sites, and general device, browser, and country data — and does not use cookies, store your IP address, identify individual visitors, or track you across other websites.

2. Information we store

We do not automatically collect personal information from visitors. The only information stored is what you voluntarily provide through two optional features:

(a) Tracked Proceedings. When you add an application to monitor, we store:

• the patent application number(s) you choose to monitor,
• an optional label you assign, and
• the email address(es) you enter to receive new-filing alerts.

(b) Daily email alerts. When you subscribe (the signup form appears at the top of every page), we store your email address (and a private token used only to generate your unsubscribe link). This is used solely to send you a once-daily email listing the prior day's relevant filings — ex parte reexamination determinations, office actions, certificates, and petitions; PTAB discretionary and institution decisions; and PTAB final written decisions; no email is sent on days with none.

This information is stored only to operate these features. We do not sell, rent, or share it, and we do not use these email addresses for any purpose other than the alerts you requested.

You can stop receiving alerts and remove your email address at any time:

• Tracked-proceeding alerts. Use the one-click unsubscribe link included in every tracked-proceeding alert email, which removes your email address from all proceedings it was set to receive alerts for.
• Daily alerts. Use the one-click unsubscribe link included in every alert email, which deletes your email address from the list.

3. Searches, documents, and public records

When you run a search, look up an application or PTAB proceeding, or open or download a document, the request is passed through the site to the USPTO Open Data Portal to return the result. The site does not retain a history of your individual searches or document views. All patent, reexamination, PTAB, and document information shown or served by the site — including the reexamination determinations, pre-order SNQ, post-order petitions, and office action timing pages, and the PTAB final written decision, discretionary/institution decision, and per-proceeding pages — is public record maintained by the USPTO.

4. Service providers

The site relies on a few third-party services to function. Your use of the site is also subject to their respective privacy practices:

• USPTO Open Data Portal (data.uspto.gov) — source of all patent, reexamination, and PTAB trial data and documents.
• Vercel — website hosting. As the host, Vercel may automatically log standard technical request data (such as IP address, timestamp, and browser information) for security and operations, per Vercel's own privacy policy.
• Neon / Vercel Postgres — database storing the Tracked Proceedings and reexamination-alert subscription data described above, plus indexes of public reexamination and PTAB records (including extracted text of PTAB decisions used to classify outcomes).
• Vercel Blob — file storage used to keep copies of certain public reexamination documents (e.g., text-searchable versions of Office of Petitions decisions).
• Resend — email delivery service used to send the tracked-proceeding and reexamination alert emails to the addresses you provide.
• OCR.space — optical-character-recognition service used to extract text from scanned public reexamination and PTAB documents (e.g., Office of Petitions decisions and image-only PTAB decisions) so they can be analyzed. Only public USPTO documents are sent; no visitor or subscriber information is sent to this service.
• SheetJS (cdn.sheetjs.com) — a third-party CDN from which your browser loads a spreadsheet library on the analytics pages, used for the "Export .xlsx" feature. Loading it exposes standard request data (e.g., IP address) to the CDN under its own practices; no information about you is sent.

We do not control, and are not responsible for, the independent data practices of these providers.

5. Data security and retention

Stored data is retained until you remove it — by unsubscribing your email address from tracked-proceeding alerts, or by unsubscribing from the daily alerts — or until it is otherwise removed. We take reasonable measures to protect the limited information stored, but no method of transmission or storage is completely secure, and we cannot guarantee absolute security.

6. Changes to this policy

This policy may be updated from time to time. Material changes will be reflected by updating the "Effective date" above.