tushariitr-19/patents-mcp

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
| Tool | Description |
|------|-------------|
| search_patents | Search patents by keyword, technology area, or inventor name |
| get_patent | Fetch full patent details by publication number |
| get_patent_claims | Fetch patent claims text |
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
3. Configure
Usage with Claude Desktop
Add to your Claude Desktop config (claude_desktop_config.json):
Screenshots
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
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/ .go
2. Define your input struct and tool definition