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IP Australia (AU) — national
Layer national
Jurisdiction AU (WIPO ST.3: AU)
Issuing body IP Australia (an executive agency under the Australian Department of Industry, Science and Resources)
Rights administered patent (standard + innovation), trademark, registered_design, plant_breeders_rights
Working languages English
Connector status active (cleanest BYOK pattern in the catalog)
Last verified 2026-05-16

Manifest entries:

Detail surveys:

Higher / sibling layers carrying overlapping data:

  • EPO INPADOC — AU patent biblio + family
  • WIPO Madrid — international TMs designating AU (AU is a Madrid member since 2001)
  • WIPO Hague — international designs designating AU (AU is a Hague member since 2022)

Rating: 🟢 Green

Modern OAuth2 OpenAPI across all rights + IP RAPID bulk (CC-BY 4.0) Jump to access details → View on the atlas →

§1 Mission

IP Australia is widely regarded as one of the cleanest national IP office data surfaces globally — modern OAuth 2.0 REST APIs across all four IP rights from one agency, plus a CC-BY 4.0 bulk catalog (IP RAPID) on data.gov.au, all under a single agency umbrella. The BACKLOG's original verdict called it "likely the easiest connector on the entire roadmap" — which proved correct, and the resulting ip_australia_* packages are now the canonical template for BYOK national-office connectors in this codebase.

Our KIPO BYOK design (and any future national-office BYOK work) should mirror this pattern.

§2 What's unique here

  • AU patent prosecution status in real time
  • AU file wrappers
  • National-only AU trademarks — not in Madrid IRs
  • National-only AU registered designs — not in Hague IRs (pre-2022 designs and post-2022 non-Hague filings)
  • Plant Breeder's Rights — AU operates a PBR register; this right type isn't covered by EP/EUIPO/INPADOC
  • AU innovation patents — though innovation patents were closed for new filings 2021-08-26 (legacy register remains active)
  • AU IP RAPID bulk data — weekly tables across all four rights, CC-BY 4.0

§3 Programmatic surfaces

IP Australia Patent Search API

Field Value
Endpoint https://api.business.gov.au/ip-australia/patent-search/v1/
Auth OAuth2 client credentials — IPAUSTRALIA_CLIENT_ID + IPAUSTRALIA_CLIENT_SECRET
Format JSON (OpenAPI 3 spec published)
Rate limit Default API gateway throttle; published in developer portal
ToS posture Permissive — supports programmatic / proxy use with proper credentials
Verdict (zero-infra proxy) 🟢 Green — operational
Primary source IP Australia API developer page

IP Australia Trade Mark Search API

Same OAuth infrastructure, separate scope. Endpoint pattern: https://api.business.gov.au/ip-australia/trade-mark-search/v1/.

IP Australia Design Search API

Same pattern: https://api.business.gov.au/ip-australia/design-search/v1/.

IP RAPID bulk catalog

Field Value
Endpoint https://data.gov.au/data/dataset/ip-rapid
Auth none
Format CSV / parquet (weekly tables across all four rights)
License CC-BY 4.0 International (corrected from the older "CC-BY 2.5 AU" research)
Verdict 🟢 Green for Shape E catalog connector (ip_australia_bulk); bulk shape, but legally clean

AustLII for APO hearings + Federal Court IP

Field Value
Endpoint AustLII SINO CGI
Auth none
Verdict 🟡 Yellow — niche; case-law layer; deferred per BACKLOG until tribunal coverage demand emerges

§4 Fees

IP Australia publishes separate fee schedules for patents, trade marks, and designs (charged in AUD).

(frozen at the date written; consult the official URLs above for current figures).

§5 Access via patent-client-agents

What we cover today

  • Three OAuth-keyed register connectors (patents/TMs/designs) — env-gated on IPAUSTRALIA_CLIENT_ID + IPAUSTRALIA_CLIENT_SECRET
  • One bulk-catalog connector (IP RAPID) — no auth required
  • All four rights, complete coverage modulo the AustLII case-law deferral

What we might improve later

  • AustLII case-law layer (au_austlii) — APO hearings + Federal Court IP. BACKLOG Tier 2 stretch. Defer until tribunal coverage demand emerges.
  • PBR-specific tools — Plant Breeder's Rights is a distinct right type carried by IP Australia. Currently treated as out-of-scope for the registered-IP search shape; might warrant its own tool if user demand emerges.

Template value

IP Australia is the canonical BYOK template for the rest of the codebase. The pattern: 1. Env-gated tool registration (tools only mount when both *_CLIENT_ID and *_CLIENT_SECRET are set) 2. OAuth2 client-credentials flow with token caching 3. Per-right modular packages sharing a common ip_australia_common scaffold 4. Manifest entries one per right 5. The same pattern applies to: EUIPO (existing), JPO (existing), KIPO (planned)

§6 Known unknowns

  • IP RAPID schema stability — confirmed CC-BY 4.0 International (corrected from older CC-BY 2.5 AU); data dictionary not yet inspected programmatically.
  • PBR-specific endpoint scope — does the existing API surface include PBR, or is it a separate (potentially undocumented) endpoint?
  • Future Hague-system integration — AU joined Hague in 2022; how do designations flow through the AU design register?

§7 References

Primary sources only.

APIs:

Fees:

Bulk + open data:

Detail surveys + fee research:

Last updated 2026-05-16.