ipto vs EPO Open Patent Services

The European Patent Office's Open Patent Services (OPS) — the same API behind the public Espacenet search tool — is free after a developer-account registration, with a fair-use quota of roughly 4GB of data per week before an unlimited paid tier (around €2,800/year) applies. It covers over 100 million documents worldwide via the INPADOC family database, including patent family, citation graph, and legal-status data. ipto's Patent Lookup covers a narrower, US-only slice — a live proxy to USPTO's Patent File Wrapper (ODP) API, granted utility patents filed 2001 onward, prosecution/bibliographic data only, with no citation graph, patent family, legal-status field, or images.

Feature	ipto	EPO Open Patent Services
API key required	Never	Yes, free developer registration (OAuth2)
Free tier volume	1,000 requests/day (general budget)	~4GB/week fair-use data quota, ~30 requests/minute
Geographic coverage	United States (USPTO) only	100M+ documents worldwide, via INPADOC
Patent family data	No — not in ODP's scope	Yes, core INPADOC feature
Citation graph	No — not in ODP's scope	Yes
Legal-status field	No — not in ODP's scope	Yes
Coverage start date	Applications filed 2001 onward	Decades of historical coverage
Cheapest paid tier	n/a (one free tier)	~€2,800/year, unlimited volume

When EPO Open Patent Services might fit better

You need patent family, citation graph, or legal-status data, or coverage outside the US — all core EPO OPS features that ipto's Patent Lookup deliberately doesn't attempt (see docs/trademark-patent-lookup-research.md for why USPTO's narrower ODP API was chosen instead).
You need global patent coverage — EPO OPS indexes 100M+ documents across dozens of patent offices via INPADOC; ipto is US-only.

When ipto fits better

You want zero registration friction for occasional US patent lookups — ipto never requires an API key or account; EPO OPS requires a free developer registration and OAuth2 client credentials before the first call.
A weekly data-volume quota is awkward for a low-traffic integration — ipto's daily request-count budget resets every 24 hours instead.

FAQ

Does ipto return patent family or citation data like EPO OPS?

No — GET /v1/patent/:number proxies USPTO's Patent File Wrapper (ODP) API, which is prosecution/bibliographic data only. Patent family, citation graphs, and legal-status fields are core EPO OPS/INPADOC features that ODP doesn't expose, so ipto can't return them either.

Does EPO OPS cover US patents too?

Yes, as part of its global INPADOC coverage — but ipto's Patent Lookup is worth using instead for a quick US-only check with no account registration, since EPO OPS requires a free developer account and OAuth2 setup before the first request.

Try it: curl https://ipto.to/v1/ip/8.8.8.8 · full API reference · all alternatives