pat2pdf

Download patent PDFs from the command line.

Supports US, EP (European), and WO (PCT/WIPO) patents.

• US patents are fetched directly from USPTO
• EP and WO patents are fetched via Google Patents

Usage

pat2pdf <patent number>

Examples

# US patents (fetched from USPTO)
pat2pdf 8259522
pat2pdf US8259522B2
pat2pdf 20130049740      # application number

# European patents (fetched from Google Patents)
pat2pdf EP1234567B1

# PCT/WIPO patents (fetched from Google Patents)
pat2pdf WO2020123456A1

Output files are saved as US8259522.pdf, EP1234567B1.pdf, etc.

Requirements

• wget
• sed
• grep

Compatibility

Should work on any Unix-like system (Linux, macOS, etc.).

History

Originally written by Oren Tirosh, Thomas Boege, and Paul William as a complicated method that fetched individual TIFF files. David Lowenfels simplified it to grab PDFs directly from USPTO, then added support for EP and WO patents via Google Patents.

License

GPL v2