Patent Landscape Report

Patent Landscape Report Skill

What this skill produces

Two outputs from the same underlying data layer:

1. A Markdown headline printed inline in the chat — one-sentence narrative summary, peak year, trend direction, top 3 applicants and jurisdictions, merge-audit count, and the file path.

2. A self-contained interactive HTML file written to ./reports/ in the current working directory. The file inlines everything it needs (ECharts ~1 MB, world GeoJSON ~250 KB, all data as JSON, CSS, JS). It opens in any browser, works offline forever, is safe to email.

The HTML has seven sections: Overview (narrative summary + four stat tiles), Leaders (top applicants bar chart), Geography (world choropleth + regional callouts for EPO/WIPO + country ranking bar chart), Trends (filings over time total + stacked-by-jurisdiction), Technology (CPC in plain English), Notable patents (top-cited table), and Methodology & caveats.

Every metric on the page has a "Why?" button. Clicking it opens a side panel showing: plain-English formula, quantification breakdown, the list of specific patents that contributed (each clickable to Google Patents), caveats, and sensitivity notes ("what would change this number").

Setup

Before the first run, verify the environment:

python3 ~/.claude/skills/patent-landscape-report/get_started.py

This checks:

• Python 3.11+ installed
• jinja2 installed (run pip install jinja2 if not)
• The google-patent-search skill is installed (for BigQuery mode)
• Vendor files (echarts.min.js, world.geo.json) are present in skill/vendor/; downloads them if not

For BigQuery mode, the user also needs gcloud auth application-default login set up. The google-patent-search skill's get_started.py handles that side — defer to it if setup is needed.

How to Handle User Requests

Step 1: Parse the request

Identify which mode the user wants:

• BigQuery search mode: They want you to pull patents from Google Patents BigQuery. Look for technology descriptions ("AI", "batteries", "CRISPR"), date hints ("last 12 months", "since 2020"), maybe jurisdiction hints ("US only", "worldwide").
• CSV mode: They provide a path to a Lens.org CSV they already exported.

Step 2: Map technology descriptions to CPC prefixes

If the user asks for a landscape by topic, translate to CPC prefixes. Common mappings:

If the topic is ambiguous or broad, ask the user to confirm the CPC prefix before running (expensive searches shouldn't be guessed).

Step 3: Run the builder

From Python:

import os, sys
sys.path.insert(0, os.path.expanduser("~/.claude/skills/patent-landscape-report/scripts"))
from landscape_builder import build_report

result = build_report({
    "mode": "bigquery",
    "cpc_prefixes": ["G06N"],                     # required for BQ
    "date_from": "2025-04-12",                    # YYYY-MM-DD
    "date_to": "2026-04-12",                      # YYYY-MM-DD
    "countries": None,                            # None = worldwide
    "row_limit": 5000,                            # sane default
    "query_label": "AI patent landscape \u2014 last 12 months",
})
print(result["headline_markdown"])

For a CSV file:

result = build_report({
    "mode": "csv",
    "csv_path": "/path/to/Lens Export.csv",
    "query_label": "Client X portfolio review",
})

Or from the command line (useful when the user wants to re-run something quickly):

# BigQuery mode, trailing 12 months
python3 scripts/landscape_builder.py search --cpc G06N --months 12 --label "AI — last 12 months"

# BigQuery mode, explicit date range
python3 scripts/landscape_builder.py search --cpc H01M --from-to 2020-01-01 2025-12-31 --label "Battery landscape"

# CSV mode
python3 scripts/landscape_builder.py csv "~/Downloads/my_export.csv" --label "Competitor portfolio"

Step 4: Present the result

The build_report call returns a dict with:

• output_path: absolute path to the HTML file
• headline_markdown: the Markdown block to print inline
• stats: dict with record_count, family_count, date_range, data_source

Print the headline verbatim in your chat response. Do not paraphrase or summarize it further — it's already compressed, and paraphrasing risks stripping the receipts. Point the user at the file path and let them know they can double-click to open it.

Step 5: If the user wants to tweak

Common follow-ups after the first report:

• "Narrow it to just the US" → add countries=["US"] and re-run
• "Include computer vision too" → add G06V to cpc_prefixes
• "Stretch the date range" → pass explicit date_from/date_to
• "Open the report" → open {output_path} on macOS, xdg-open on Linux

Never silently re-run an expensive BigQuery query with modified parameters. Always show the new filter set and confirm before re-running if the cost might exceed 5 GB (the skill's data_fetcher_bigquery raises its ceiling to 20 GB, so typical queries run without friction, but very broad CPC + multi- year worldwide searches can exceed that).

Cost awareness

BigQuery charges by bytes scanned. The google-patent-search skill handles cost estimation via dry-runs before every query. Typical landscape query costs:

• G06N worldwide, 12 months: ~3–8 GB scanned
• G06N US only, 24 months: ~1–2 GB
• Very broad searches (e.g. all H04L worldwide, 10 years): 20+ GB

If a query exceeds the cost ceiling, the skill raises a BigQueryError. Show the error to the user, explain what would narrow it, and wait for them to approve before passing force=True.

Free-tier allowance: 1 TB/month. A typical landscape report run is a rounding error against this.

Output location

Default: ./reports/ in the current working directory (whichever folder the user is working in when they invoke the skill). Each report gets a timestamped filename like patent-landscape_ai-landscape_20260412-1034.html.

Users can override with the output_dir argument in build_report() or the --output-dir CLI flag.

What the report does NOT include

Some fields from the Lens.org CSV workflow are not available in BigQuery mode and are gracefully omitted from search-mode reports:

• Legal status (ACTIVE / PENDING / etc.) — only available from USPTO for US patents. Not in BigQuery. CSV-mode reports keep it.
• Forward citation counts — too expensive to query at scale. The Notable Patents section falls back to "most recent filings from top applicants" when citations are unavailable.
• Detailed family member lists — the skill uses BigQuery's family_id for dedup but doesn't fetch every family member's metadata.
• File history (prosecution documents) — not included in the landscape report itself. Use the history subcommand below to pull file wrappers for specific patents, or delegate to the uspto-patent-search skill.

These limitations are documented in the Methodology section of every report.

USPTO escalation path

The landscape report is a snapshot built from BigQuery (or CSV) data. For deeper work on specific US patents — file histories, prosecution rejections, PTAB challenges, current legal status, assignment chain-of-title — the user should use the uspto-patent-search skill. This skill exposes one convenience wrapper for the most common follow-up: downloading file wrappers.

Download file histories for specific US patents

python3 scripts/landscape_builder.py history US11000000 US11000001 \
  --output-dir reports/file-histories/

Or from Python:

from landscape_builder import download_file_history
results = download_file_history(
    ["US-11000000-B2", "11000001"],
    output_dir="reports/file-histories/",
    key_docs_only=True,   # False = download everything in the wrapper
)

The result is one subdirectory per patent containing the key prosecution documents as PDFs. Document types included by default: office actions, amendments, IDS filings, notices of allowance, examiner interviews. Pass --all-docs to get everything in the wrapper (can be hundreds of files).

This is the bridge between the landscape report (breadth — thousands of patents, metadata only) and USPTO deep-dive (depth — one patent, full prosecution history). When a user reading a landscape report says "I want to understand patent US X," the history subcommand is the next step.

Other USPTO-only follow-ups

For anything beyond file-history PDFs — prosecution analytics, PTAB challenges, chain of title, examiner statistics — call the uspto-patent-search skill directly. SKILL.md in that skill has the full routing matrix. Common follow-ups:

All of these take a US patent number and work independently of the landscape report. Run them after the landscape report reveals a patent worth deep-diving.

Troubleshooting

• "No patent records returned": Either the CPC prefix is wrong or the date range is too narrow. Double-check the CPC against the table above.
• "BigQuery auth failed": Run gcloud auth application-default login and retry.
• "Query would scan X GB": Narrow the filters (country, date range, more specific CPC) or ask the user for explicit approval to exceed the ceiling.
• "Vendor file not found": Run get_started.py to download the vendor assets (echarts.min.js and world.geo.json).
• "google-patent-search skill not found": Install it from its repo and re-run get_started.py.