Patents Mcp

patents-mcp

[Go Version] [License: MIT] [tushariitr-19/patents-mcp MCP server]

An MCP (Model Context Protocol) server for patent search and prior art discovery, powered by the Google Patents public dataset on BigQuery.

Built with the official Go MCP SDK.

Why patents-mcp?

Existing patent MCP servers are either paid, single-source, or unmaintained. patents-mcp is:

• Free — built on Google Patents public dataset (1TB/month free on BigQuery)
• Open source — MIT licensed
• Production grade — structured logging, graceful shutdown, clean architecture
• Extensible — each tool is self-contained, easy to add new tools

Available Tools

Prerequisites

• Go 1.21+
• A Google Cloud account (free)
• BigQuery API enabled on your GCP project

Setup

1. Google Cloud Setup

1. Create a GCP project at console.cloud.google.com
2. Enable the BigQuery API
3. Create a service account with the following roles:
   • BigQuery Job User
   • BigQuery Data Viewer
4. Download the service account JSON key

2. Install

git clone https://github.com/tushariitr-19/patents-mcpcd patents-mcpgo build -o patents-mcp-server ./cmd/server/

3. Configure

export GOOGLE_APPLICATION_CREDENTIALS="/path/to/service-account.json"export GCP_PROJECT_ID="your-gcp-project-id"
# Optional: enable debug loggingexport DEBUG=true

Usage with Claude Desktop

Add to your Claude Desktop config (claude_desktop_config.json):

{  "mcpServers": {    "patents-mcp": {      "command": "/path/to/patents-mcp-server",      "env": {        "GOOGLE_APPLICATION_CREDENTIALS": "/path/to/service-account.json",        "GCP_PROJECT_ID": "your-gcp-project-id"      }    }  }}

Screenshots

Available Tools

[Available Tools]

Example Prompts

Once connected to Claude Desktop:

• "Search for patents related to transformer neural networks"
• "Find prior art for context-aware UI element hiding"
• "What patents has Google filed related to quantum computing?"
• "Find patents by inventor Yann LeCun"

Architecture

patents-mcp/├── cmd/server/main.go       ← entry point, env vars, graceful shutdown├── server/server.go         ← MCP server setup, tool registration├── tools/│   └── search.go            ← search_patents tool (self-contained)├── bigquery/│   └── client.go            ← BigQuery query execution├── logger/│   └── logger.go            ← structured logging via zap└── models/    └── patent.go            ← shared Patent struct

Each tool owns its own dependencies — the server is agnostic of what tools do internally. Adding a new tool is a single line in server/server.go.

Contributing

PRs welcome. To add a new tool:

1. Create tools/<toolname>.go
2. Define your input struct and tool definition
3. Register it in server/server.go with one line

License

MIT