Six focused product walkthroughs.

Short, step-by-step tours of how patent teams actually use Patent Bear: start with Research, then jump into AI, search, the reader, claim charts, or file history. Prefer reference? The how-to documentation is below.

Search patents, publications, and applications

Use the homepage search bar for quick lookups by number, assignee, inventor, title terms, or plain-language technical concepts.

1. Type a US patent number, publication number, or application number to open the matching record directly when Patent Bear can identify it.
2. Use keyword searches for broader discovery across grants and pre-grant publications.
3. Open advanced search with the plus button to choose document groups, match fields, assignee, inventor, and date ranges.
4. Use autocomplete results for number-like searches when you want to confirm the title before opening a record.

Use advanced search

Advanced search is for structured queries when a single search box is too loose.

1. Click the plus button in the homepage search bar to open advanced search.
2. Enter keywords in Natural mode for plain-language search, or switch to Boolean when you want operators such as AND, OR, NOT, parentheses, or exact phrases.
3. Choose whether to search grants, publications, articles, or a patent-only combination.
4. Use Match on to limit the query to fields such as title, abstract, claims, description, latest assignee, inventor, CPC, or related classification fields.
5. Add latest recorded assignee, previous recorded owner, inventor, and CPC filters when you know who filed, owned, worked on, or classified the invention.
6. Use date ranges for issue date, publication date, or earliest filing date. Quick ranges set common windows; custom date inputs override them.
7. Press Enter or click Search to run the query. Use Reset when you want to clear the structured fields and start over.

Use Ursa suggestions in search

Ursa Suggestions turns a plain-English research goal into advanced-search fields you can review before running the search.

1. Open advanced search from the homepage search bar.
2. In Ursa Suggestions, describe the search you want, such as the technology, legal issue, date window, owner, inventor, or document scope.
3. Click Ask Ursa. You must be signed in, and the request uses your daily Ursa chat capacity.
4. Review the suggestions modal. Ursa may propose keyword mode, keywords, assignees, inventors, previous recorded owners, CPC, date ranges, document groups, and Match on fields.
5. Click Accept fields to apply the suggested fields to the advanced-search form, or Retry if the structure is not what you wanted.
6. Edit any applied field manually before clicking Search. Ursa fills the form; you decide what to run.

Understand Patent Bear's patent corpus

Patent Bear is powered by an indexed patent corpus and retrieval layer built from public patent records and related technical sources.

1. Patent Bear does not own the underlying public patent records. It ingests and organizes public grants, published applications, prosecution records, figures, assignments, family data, and technical literature into a research-ready corpus.
2. Search, Ursa, and Research analyses retrieve evidence from that corpus before AI summarizes, structures, or analyzes the result.
3. Ursa uses this retrieval layer to ground answers in patent text and return citations you can inspect.
4. Prior Art analysis uses the same foundation to search across references, rerank candidates, and map claim elements to cited passages.
5. Because the system is built around patent records rather than generic web pages, you can move from search to reading, file wrappers, citations, annotations, and analysis results in the same workspace.

Read a patent cleanly

Patent pages are organized for research rather than raw database display, with structured sections, figures, metadata, and controls around the document.

1. Use the table of contents to jump between abstract, drawings, description, claims, and metadata.
2. Review figures beside the specification when available.
3. Adjust reading preferences such as theme, text size, and content width from the page controls.
4. Download PDFs when you need the original document or a local copy.

Work with figures and reference numerals

Patent Bear keeps figures close to the text so you can move between drawings, labels, and written description without losing your place.

1. Use the figure strip or figure controls on a patent page to jump between drawings.
2. Open figure thumbnails to inspect drawings while reading the specification or claims.
3. Use numeral labels when available to show detected reference numerals on the figure.
4. Right-click a figure thumbnail to open figure actions, including adding a figure note.
5. Figure notes are saved with your annotations and can be reviewed from the annotations panel.

Review application and prosecution history

Application pages focus on file-wrapper review, family context, and prosecution documents.

1. Open an application number directly from search or from a related patent page.
2. Use prosecution documents to inspect office actions, responses, notices, and other file-wrapper records.
3. Download individual documents or merged prosecution PDFs where available.
4. Use prosecution search to find claim language or examiner statements across the file history.

Highlight text and add notes

Highlights and notes are the fastest way to keep research state attached to a patent.

1. Select text in the abstract, claims, or specification. A floating menu opens near the selection.
2. Choose a highlight color to save the selected passage. The most recent color is remembered for your next highlight.
3. Choose Add Note if you want to save the selected passage with commentary instead of only color.
4. Use Copy Text to copy the selection, or Copy With Cite when a citation is available for that section.
5. Click an existing highlight to reopen its actions. You can edit the note, change color, copy, hide, or delete it.

Use right-click actions on highlighted text

Existing highlights have their own context actions so you can revise work without hunting through the side panel.

1. Right-click highlighted text to open the highlight action menu.
2. Use Add Note or Edit Note to attach commentary to that exact excerpt.
3. Use Copy to copy the highlighted text. If the highlighted passage has a citation, use Copy With Cite for a source-ready quote.
4. Use Hide Highlight when you want to keep the annotation saved but temporarily remove it from the reading surface.
5. Use Delete Highlight to move the annotation out of your active notes.
6. For claim-term highlights, use the term-specific actions to show occurrences, hide the term, or delete it from saved terms.

Save claim terms

When you highlight text inside a claim, Patent Bear can treat that text as a saved claim term.

1. Select a term or phrase in a claim and choose a highlight color.
2. The selected claim text is saved as a term for that claim, using a cleaned version of the selected text so trailing punctuation does not create a separate term.
3. Open the annotations panel and switch to Terms to review saved claim terms.
4. Add a term note when you want to record a construction issue, ambiguity, antecedent-basis question, or prosecution-history thought.
5. Use Hide on a term to keep it saved while removing its visible occurrence markings from the patent page.
6. Delete a term when it should no longer be tracked for that patent.

Show and navigate term occurrences

Occurrences help you see where a saved claim term appears across the patent, not just where you first highlighted it.

1. Click Show All Occurrences from a claim-term highlight or Show occurrences from the Terms panel.
2. Patent Bear marks matching occurrences across the abstract, claims, specification, and tables where matching text is found.
3. Use the occurrence navigator to move previous and next through matches. The navigator shows your current position, such as 1 of 8.
4. Click an occurrence to focus it and reopen term actions.
5. Use Hide All Occurrences or Hide occurrences to turn off the markings while keeping the saved term.
6. If Patent Bear shows No other occurrences found, the selected term is saved but no additional matching text was found outside the current location.

Use the annotations panel

The annotations panel is the control center for notes, highlights, saved terms, hidden items, and recently deleted work.

1. Open the panel from a patent page to review notes and saved terms for the current patent.
2. Use Notes to scan highlighted excerpts, jump back to the source passage, edit comments, hide highlights, or delete them.
3. Use Terms to review saved claim terms, show occurrences, add term comments, and jump between claims that use the same term.
4. Use panel actions to hide or show all notes or all terms when the reading surface gets crowded.
5. Use Recently Deleted to restore accidentally removed highlights or terms, or permanently delete them when you are sure.
6. Saved annotations persist to your account when you are signed in.

Ask Ursa chat

Ask Ursa is Patent Bear's general AI chat for patent research questions, search planning, invention ideas, and analysis strategy.

1. Open Ask Ursa from the homepage search bar or go to /ask-ursa.
2. Sign in if prompted. Ursa chat uses your daily chat capacity, and paid plans add shared AI usage across Research, Patent Chat, and AI Mode.
3. Start a new chat for a new research thread, or reopen a recent chat from the sidebar.
4. Ask patent-focused questions, such as turning an invention description into search terms, planning an invalidity search, comparing claim language, or deciding which analysis to run.
5. Use Search chats when you need to find a prior conversation.
6. Copy, share, or retry an Ursa response from the response actions.

Ask questions about a patent

Patent chat helps you interrogate a document with cited answers that point back to the underlying record.

1. Open chat from a patent page when you need a summary, claim explanation, comparison, or targeted question answered.
2. Ask narrow questions for better citations, such as where a limitation is described or how a term is used.
3. Follow citations back into the patent text before relying on an answer.
4. Keep sensitive strategy out of prompts unless it is necessary for the analysis you request.

Use chat citations and citation actions

Chat answers include citations that can jump back to claims, specification paragraphs, or the abstract.

1. Click a citation in a chat answer to scroll to the cited patent text.
2. When the answer includes a quote, Patent Bear selects or focuses the quoted passage after scrolling.
3. Right-click a chat citation to open citation actions.
4. Choose a color to highlight the cited passage directly from chat.
5. Choose Add Note to create a note on the cited passage.
6. Choose Add Chat's Note when you want the chat answer context saved with the patent excerpt.
7. Use Copy Text from the citation menu to copy the citation label and quote.

Create and export claim charts

Claim charts break claims into elements so you can add structured notes and export work product.

1. Open a patent, choose the claim-chart workflow, and select the claim you want to chart.
2. Review the automatic element split and refine it where legal or technical nuance requires a different grouping.
3. Add notes alongside each element as you review prior art, products, or prosecution history.
4. Export to Word when the chart is ready for a brief, memo, or client report.

Open and use Research

Research brings together free search and credit-based analyses for prior art, charting, disclosure, priority, claim construction, invention review, and clearance-style research.

1. Open Research from the top navigation. Search (patent search, advanced search, Cases, and structured search) is at the top; analyses are below.
2. Choose the analysis that matches your research task: Prior Art, Charting, Disclosure, Clearance, Invention, Priority, or Claim Construction.
3. Analyses require a signed-in account and credits. Each analysis costs 1 credit to start; Prior Art costs 1 to 3 depending on the claims and depth you choose.
4. Use the usage indicator to see how many of your monthly credits are used and when they reset.
5. If an analysis run fails, the credit is refunded.
6. Review generated outputs as research assistance, then verify important conclusions against the cited sources.

Run a Prior Art analysis

A Prior Art analysis reviews a patent claim element by element against patents, publications, and non-patent literature.

1. Open Research, then choose Prior Art.
2. Enter a US grant patent number. Autocomplete suggestions appear as you type when matching patents are found.
3. Choose the patent you want to challenge. Patent Bear opens a claim-selection workflow for that patent.
4. Select the claim or claim set you want analyzed.
5. Run the analysis and review results by claim element, references, and cited evidence.
6. Open recent Prior Art runs from the Prior Art page or your Library when you need to resume work.

Run a Disclosure analysis

A Disclosure analysis maps claim limitations back to the specification and flags potential written-description, enablement, and definiteness issues.

1. Open Research, then choose Disclosure.
2. Enter a US grant patent number to audit. Suggestions appear when matching patents are found.
3. Select the patent and choose the claims you want to review.
4. Run the audit to generate limitation-by-limitation support analysis.
5. Review written-description, enablement, and definiteness signals separately.
6. Verify every cited column-line or paragraph reference against the full specification before relying on the output.

Run an Invention analysis

An Invention analysis searches for nearby prior art from a plain-English invention disclosure before formal claims are drafted.

1. Open Research, then choose Invention.
2. Paste a product note, draft disclosure, or technical summary.
3. Review the extracted invention elements. Edit, add, or remove elements so the search targets match the invention you actually want to test.
4. Set the cutoff date for the search.
5. Run the analysis and review references by element coverage, cited evidence, and summary.
6. Use follow-up search options when a result shows gaps or when you want a broader search around the invention.

Run a Clearance analysis

A Clearance analysis screens a product or feature description against granted patent claims to surface potentially blocking patents.

1. Open Research, then choose Clearance.
2. Describe the product, feature set, or launch note you want screened.
3. Review the extracted clearance-search features. Edit the features before running if the decomposition is too broad or misses an important product detail.
4. Run the scan to retrieve and screen granted patent claims.
5. Review ranked patents, overlap signals, claim evidence, and risk-style summaries.
6. Verify any concerning result against the cited claim language and full patent record before making a design, launch, or legal decision.

Run Priority and Claim Construction analyses

Priority and Claim Construction are available in Research alongside the other analyses.

1. A Priority analysis walks the priority chain and tests whether claims are entitled to earlier filing dates.
2. A Claim Construction analysis builds Markman-style constructions from claims, specification, and prosecution history.
3. Open Research, then choose Priority or Claim Construction.
4. Each run costs 1 credit and saves to your Library.

Use your Library as the research hub

The Library brings together recent activity, saved patents, claim charts, analysis results, usage, and account state.

1. Open Library to resume recent patent reviews and searches.
2. Use saved patents to maintain a working set for a matter or project.
3. Review usage and plan status when working with AI chat, claim charts, or Research.
4. Sign in before research sessions you want Patent Bear to remember.

Manage access, billing, and data

Account controls cover sign-in, subscription state, team setup, and data handling.

1. Use the account button in the top navigation to sign in, sign out, or open account areas.
2. Visit Pricing to compare plans and upgrade when you need more analysis capacity.
3. Read Security for infrastructure, AI data-handling, and privacy commitments.
4. Contact Patent Bear if you need export, deletion, billing, or team setup help.