Privacy Policy.

This Privacy Policy describes what information Patent Bear, operated by Puzzlelike LLC, a California limited liability company (“Puzzlelike,” “we,” “us,” or “our”), collects, how it’s used, and the rights you have over your data.

1. 01

   Information we collect

   What we collect and why:

   • AccountEmail address and authentication credentials when you create an account.
   • HistoryThe patents, cases, opinions, judges and examiners you open and the searches you run, stored so you can revisit them. You choose how long we keep them (Library → Preferences → History), including not at all.
   • Saved patentsPatents you bookmark or save into folders, stored with your account.
   • AnnotationsHighlights, notes, and saved claim terms, stored with your account.
   • Research and Draft inputs and outputsPatent numbers, selected claims, invention or product descriptions, pasted disclosures, reference lists, generated elements, search results, claim mappings, citations, summaries, draft documents, and run metadata for the analyses and drafts you start or save.
   • UsageHow you interact with the service (pages visited, features used, timestamps, campaign source, and coarse event metadata) for product reliability and improvement.
   • Connector requestsWhen you use Patent Bear through an AI assistant or the API, we log each request our server handles: which tool was called, identifiers such as patent, application, or document numbers, the outcome and any error message, and timing. We do not store what you wrote: search queries, invention or product descriptions, notes, and other free text are never written to these logs. We never receive your conversation with the assistant. These logs are used for reliability, support, and abuse prevention, are visible only to Patent Bear staff, and are deleted after 90 days.
2. 02

   Cookies and local storage

   We use cookies and browser local storage to maintain your authentication session and store user preferences. These are essential for the service to function. We may also use privacy-friendly, cookieless analytics to understand aggregate product usage. We do not use browser storage for advertising or cross-site tracking.

3. 03

   Third-party services

   Patent Bear relies on a small set of infrastructure providers and public data sources. We do not use third-party analytics.

   • SupabaseAuthentication and database. Account information and application data live on Supabase infrastructure.
   • CloudflareCDN, and hosts patent figure images, OCR artifacts, column-line artifacts, and related generated files via Cloudflare R2 storage.
   • StripeProcesses subscription payments. We never store your credit card number.
   • VercelHosts the Patent Bear application.
   • OpenAIGenerates AI chat, Research, and Draft responses through OpenAI's business API, never consumer products like ChatGPT. Processes prompts, patent text, generated elements, and evidence snippets when needed to provide AI-assisted features. Under OpenAI's API terms, these inputs and outputs are not used to train OpenAI's models unless the customer opts in; Patent Bear does not opt in. Patent Bear's OpenAI organization operates under Zero Data Retention: OpenAI does not log or retain what we send it, except images of published patent drawings, which are public documents.
   • DeepInfraReranks text passages by relevance (the retrieval step that selects which passages our models read) for patent chat, Research analysis, and related retrieval features. Runs an open model; under our Data Processing Agreement, DeepInfra adheres to Zero Data Retention and does not use inputs to train models.
   • USPTO, EPO, and court recordsPublic data sources, not processors of your data. Patent and decision corpora are built from bulk data the USPTO, the EPO, and the courts publish, downloaded into Patent Bear's own storage. Prosecution records (file histories, family and term data) are fetched on demand from the USPTO Open Data Portal and Global Dossier and cached on our servers; those requests carry only the application or patent number, never your queries or work product.
   • Connected AI assistantsWhen you connect Patent Bear to an AI assistant such as Claude, ChatGPT, or Gemini, results you request are returned to that assistant, and its provider processes them under your own agreement with that provider. Patent Bear does not otherwise send your content to it and does not control its data practices. Connect only assistants whose terms suit your work, and disconnect any time from your plan page.
   • HetznerHosts Patent Bear's private, single-tenant worker services for some Research search, ranking, OCR, column-line, and analysis jobs. Jobs are keyed by an anonymous account identifier, and inputs are processed transiently in memory over encrypted connections, not persisted to worker disk.
   • ResendDelivers transactional email such as sign-in links, receipts, and account notices. Processes your email address and the message content.
4. 04

   AI features, Research, Draft, and your data

   When you use AI chat, Research, or Draft, your questions, pasted descriptions, selected claims, patent text, generated elements, search queries, evidence snippets, and analysis instructions may be processed through exactly two AI providers: OpenAI, to generate the response, and DeepInfra, to rank which patent passages are most relevant to your question. Both are accessed through their business API tiers, whose terms bar the provider from training AI models on customer inputs and outputs unless the customer explicitly opts in. Patent Bear does not opt in, and we will not change that without updating this policy first. Research jobs run on our private worker services keyed by an anonymous account identifier. Conversations, Research runs, and drafts are stored with your account so you can revisit them; delete them or request account deletion at any time. If you use Patent Bear through a connected AI assistant, what that assistant does with the results is governed by your agreement with its provider.

5. 05

   How we use your information

   • ·Provide and maintain the service.
   • ·Authenticate your account and manage sessions.
   • ·Display your search history, saved patents, and annotations.
   • ·Run Research analyses and prepare Draft documents, including element breakdown, prior-art search, charting, disclosure analysis, clearance screening, citation search, OCR, column-line generation, and related progress tracking.
   • ·Process subscription payments.
   • ·Improve the service and fix issues.
6. 06

   Legal bases for processing

   • ContractProviding the service you signed up for: search, saved patents, annotations, Research runs, drafts, the connector, and account management.
   • Legitimate interestsKeeping the service secure, preventing abuse, measuring aggregate usage, and improving features. We minimise the data involved and do not profile you.
   • Legal obligationKeeping billing and tax records, and responding to lawful requests.
   • ConsentOptional product emails. You can withdraw consent at any time from the email itself or by writing to us.
7. 07

   International transfers

   Puzzlelike LLC is based in the United States, and most of the providers listed above process data in the United States. If you use Patent Bear from the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom, or Switzerland, your data is transferred to the United States. For those transfers we rely on the European Commission's Standard Contractual Clauses and the UK International Data Transfer Addendum, as incorporated in our agreements with each provider, together with the encryption and access controls described on our Security page. Research jobs on our Hetzner workers run in Germany.

8. 08

   Your rights

   You can exercise these rights from Preferences or by writing to hello@patentbear.com:

   • Access and portabilityRequest a copy of the personal data we hold about you in a machine-readable format. Use the Export your data button in Preferences, or email us. We respond within one month.
   • CorrectionUpdate your name and email in Preferences, or ask us to correct anything else.
   • DeletionDelete your account from Preferences, or ask us to erase your data. Billing records required by law are kept for the statutory period.
   • Restriction and objectionAsk us to pause or stop a particular processing activity, including processing based on legitimate interests.
   • ComplaintIf you are in the EEA or UK you may lodge a complaint with your local data protection authority, including the UK Information Commissioner's Office. We would appreciate the chance to address your concern first.
   • CaliforniaIf you are a California resident you have the rights to know, delete, correct, and to opt out of sale or sharing. We do not sell personal information and do not share it for cross-context behavioural advertising.
9. 09

   Subprocessors

   The providers above are our subprocessors. A current list with locations, the data each one handles, and the safeguards in place is published at patentbear.com/subprocessors. Business customers who need a data processing agreement can request one at hello@patentbear.com.

10. 10

    Data retention and deletion

    We retain your data for as long as your account is active, including saved Research runs, drafts, generated reports, progress metadata, and outputs associated with your account. You can request a copy of your data or delete your account at any time from Preferences, or by emailing hello@patentbear.com. When an account is deleted, we remove your personal information from our active databases; copies in encrypted backups expire on their rotation cycle, within 30 days. Billing records are retained as required by law.

11. 11

    Data security

    We implement reasonable technical and organizational measures to protect your information. All data is transmitted over HTTPS. Authentication tokens are stored using industry-standard practices. No method of transmission or storage is completely secure, and we cannot guarantee absolute security; see our Security page for specifics.

12. 12

    Children’s privacy

    Patent Bear is not directed to children under 13. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13.

13. 13

    Changes to this policy

    We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. We will notify users of material changes by updating the “Effective” date at the top of this page.

14. 14

    Contact

    Questions about this Privacy Policy, data export requests, and deletion requests: hello@patentbear.com. Puzzlelike LLC, 2108 N St, Ste N, Sacramento, CA 95816, United States, is the data controller.