Google Patents

You can search Google Patents programmatically through a dedicated MCP (Model Context Protocol) server. It exposes a single tool, search_patents, which queries Google Patents via SerpApi and returns structured results you can feed into your MCP client workflows. This makes it easy to build patent-related capabilities into assistants, chatbots, or automation pipelines without wiring your own API calls.

How to use

Use this MCP server with an MCP client to perform patent searches. You supply a query and optional filters (like language, country, status, or date ranges). The server returns results from SerpApi that you can present to users, filter, or summarize within your client. You can run the server via npx without installing locally, and you pass your SerpApi API key to authorize requests.

How to install

Prerequisites you need before running the server:

• Node.js 18 or higher is recommended
• npm is required to run npx
• SerpApi API key is required to access Google Patents data

Install and run the MCP server directly with npx. The simplest approach is to use the package name with npx so you don’t need a local install.

npx @kunihiros/google-patents-mcp

Configuration

Provide your SerpApi API key to authorize requests. You can set it as an environment variable or via a host configuration for MCP hosts.

Environment variable method (recommended for MCP hosts): set SERPAPI_API_KEY to your SerpApi key when running the server or in the host configuration.

Alternative: place the key in a local .env file for testing. This is convenient for local testing but less secure for production.

The server searches for .env files in these locations, in order: ./ .env and ~/.google-patents-mcp.env.

Example host configuration for an MCP host (snippets show the exact structure to copy):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "google_patents_mcp": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": [
        "-y", 
        "@kunihiros/google-patents-mcp"
      ],
      "env": {
        "SERPAPI_API_KEY": "YOUR_ACTUAL_SERPAPI_KEY"
        // Optional: Set log level
        // "LOG_LEVEL": "debug"
      }
    }
  }
}

Troubleshooting and notes

If you encounter issues, verify your SerpApi API key is correct and that your environment has network access to SerpApi endpoints. Check logs for errors related to API key validation, rate limits, or missing parameters.

Available tools

search_patents

Searches Google Patents through SerpApi and returns results in the SerpApi response format. Supports filtering by query, page, number of results, language, country, status, type, and date ranges.