USPTO Office Actions¶

Office-action analytics: rejection counts, cited references, full text, and enriched citation metadata. Uses the USPTO ODP office-action endpoints (separate namespace from applications/PTAB).

Quick Start¶

from patent_client_agents.uspto_office_actions import OfficeActionClient

async with OfficeActionClient() as client:
    # Structured rejection records per application
    rejections = await client.search_rejections(
        "patentApplicationNumber:16123456"
    )

    # Prior-art citations, with examiner-vs-applicant flag
    citations = await client.search_citations(
        "patentApplicationNumber:16123456 AND examinerCitedReferenceIndicator:true"
    )

    # Full office-action text
    text = await client.search_office_action_text(
        "patentApplicationNumber:16123456"
    )

Configuration¶

Requires a USPTO ODP API key (same key as the main ODP client):

export USPTO_ODP_API_KEY="your-api-key"

Client¶

OfficeActionClient inherits from law_tools_core.BaseAsyncClient.

Functions¶

Function	Description
`search_rejections(criteria, start, rows)`	101/102/103/112/DP rejection records
`search_citations(criteria, start, rows)`	Prior-art references cited
`search_office_action_text(criteria, start, rows)`	Full `bodyText` of office actions
`search_enriched_citations(criteria, start, rows)`	Citations with inventor names, passage locations

Query syntax¶

Lucene-style, over ODP's office-action index. Common fields:

Rejections: patentApplicationNumber, hasRej101, hasRej102, hasRej103, hasRej112, hasRejDP, legalSectionCode, nationalClass, groupArtUnitNumber, submissionDate, aliceIndicator, allowedClaimIndicator.

Citations: patentApplicationNumber, referenceIdentifier, parsedReferenceIdentifier, legalSectionCode, examinerCitedReferenceIndicator, applicantCitedExaminerReferenceIndicator, groupArtUnitNumber, techCenter.

Office-action text: patentApplicationNumber, inventionTitle, submissionDate, legacyDocumentCodeIdentifier (CTNF, CTFR, NOA), patentNumber, applicationTypeCategory.

Enriched citations: citedDocumentIdentifier, inventorNameText, countryCode, kindCode, officeActionCategory, citationCategoryCode, officeActionDate, nplIndicator.

Result shape¶

Each search returns a SearchResponse (Pydantic v2) with a results list plus total_count. See patent_client_agents/uspto_office_actions/models.py for the full schema.

Usage patterns¶

# Find applications with 103 rejections invoking an "Alice" test
async with OfficeActionClient() as client:
    hits = await client.search_rejections(
        "hasRej103:1 AND aliceIndicator:1",
        rows=50,
    )
    for r in hits.results[:10]:
        print(f"{r.patentApplicationNumber}: {r.inventionTitle}")

Error handling¶

Inherits typed exceptions from law_tools_core: AuthenticationError (401/403), RateLimitError (429, with retry_after), NotFoundError (404), ApiError.