Patent searches have long been associated with convoluted terminology, strict keyword logic, and many hours of experimentation. Perplexity is changing that with Perplexity Patents. A completely innovative AI-driven search engine allows professionals to ask simple, everyday language questions and receive coherent, human-readable results automatically linked to the source documents.
The service is available in beta for free. Quotas are available for paying subscribers. No more wrangling of Boolean strings and CPC codes; ask the search as you would ask your coworker and then adjust the results in a casual conversation with it. Verification is simpler with an inline viewer and direct links. Simple summaries are not enough to verify freedom to operate or check whether something is patentable.
How the AI patent research tool works in practice
Ask, “Which patents and applications cover AI-driven language teaching?” The system produces a targeted list of competing patents and applications, aggregated by topic. “Show recent grants” or “screen by assignee” or “intent around redesign notions” with follow-up prompts to broaden or reduce the list in moments.
It also proposes sibling themes that you could ignore, such as “adaptive pitch designs” or “study certification classifiers.” An important promise here is semantic confirmation. When you ask for “fitness trackers,” the service may return “activity bands” or “step-counting wristwatches” or “fitness monitoring accessories.” For practitioners used to jotting International and Cooperative Patent Classification codes on scraps of paper, each associated synonym indicates fewer terminology details and fewer misinformed mentions that arise in a first line of questioning.
Why it matters for IP teams and patent professionals
The scale of prior art is staggering. According to databases maintained by organizations such as WIPO and the European Patent Office, global patent collections now encompass well over 100 million documents across national offices and international systems. According to WIPO’s reporting, hundreds of thousands of Patent Cooperation Treaty filings occur each year—add to this the number of new disclosures.
And the American Intellectual Property Law Association’s Economic Survey has long reported that professional prior-art searches routinely run into the low thousands of dollars. That’s the cost of time and expertise; when buying in professional eyes across as many as a few dozen sources, due diligence costs soar.
In this context, an AI assistant that quickly identifies relevant clusters, translates jargon into everyday language, and lets users iterate naturally is not just a convenience. It can compress early diligence activities like those above from days to hours—which can be critical for time-sensitive workstreams like R&D roadmapping, novelty checks before drafting, or competitive landscaping, where getting to the relevant data first can mean the difference between securing an advantageous licensing agreement and being blocked due to a complex patent landscape.
Beyond patents: broader research across papers and code
Perplexity says the tool won’t stop at patent offices. It scans places like academic papers and public code repositories; the latter is often where the first signals of a new technique appear. For teams tracking fast-moving fields like generative AI, quantum algorithms, or bioinformatics, this blended view helps to map the continuum from preprint to prototype to filing, to reveal who is doing what and how rapidly activity is converging on protectable inventions.
That breadth comes with a familiar caveat: AI summaries are starting points, not legal opinions. Attorneys and agents will still need to read the claims, confirm priority dates, and compare embodiments. The built-in links and inline viewer matter here, because trust hinges on rapid verification and the ability to cite exact passages when preparing office action responses or drafting claim amendments. For example, this is a piece of prose that AI might riff on, predicting food and drink combinations.
Positioning against existing patent search options
Perplexity Patents enters a competitive landscape that includes Google Patents, WIPO’s Patentscope, The Lens, and commercial platforms like Clarivate and PatSnap. Everyone has sprinkled some machine learning fairy dust on the site, but most still require the user to master advanced filters before the results get interesting. Perplexity’s wager here is an AI-first workflow: natural language in, conversational refinement out.
Semantic retrieval is the foundation: the engine understands how to find acronyms, synonyms, and terms of art, and how they evolve from one jurisdiction to another. The differentiators to watch will be coverage and freshness across the major offices, reproducibility of searches for audit trails, and export features that fit well into existing prosecution and analytics pipelines. If the beta nails those fundamentals, the conversational layer could dramatically improve how non-specialists engage in diligence and competitive research.
Availability and pricing for Perplexity Patents beta
The patent tool is available globally in beta at launch. It’s free to use during the beta period, with Perplexity’s top-tier subscribers receiving higher usage quotas and additional model configuration options. For teams that are already testing the company’s AI search models, the new workflow will fit neatly into early-stage diligence, scaling up to heavier-weight professional tools as needed.
Patent research will never be “one click,” but even just making the first pass faster and more discoverable is a meaningful step. If Perplexity can merge conversational discovery with rigorous sourcing and enterprise-grade controls, it might nudge prior-art search a little more toward how innovators naturally operate, think, and ask questions.