UPDATE (April 2020): I have greatly enhanced this software tool since its inception, so much so that I have renamed the tool “Patent Claims Analyzer” to reflect its broadened scope. See this page for additional information about this newer version.

I recently published a Chrome browser extension that provides a patent claims tree for a given patent document — this tool is available here.  I developed the tool for myself, and I find it quite handy in my daily patent analysis work, so I thought I would share it with the patent community for free.  I hope you like it.

Features:

• Supports the following websites:
  • USPTO
  • FreePatentsOnline
  • Google Patents
  • ArchPatent
• Displays the type of claim (e.g., apparatus, method, system, etc.)
• Displays the word count for independent claims
• Highlights the claim with the shortest word count
• Displays a means-plus-function (MPF) language indication (searches for word “means”)
• Links to USPTO Assignment database for the current US patent document.
• Links to USPTO Maintenance Fees for the current patent.
• Links for searching for US patent litigation associated with the patent.
• Links to Google Patents PDF for the current US patent document.
• Links to Google Patents Prior Art Finder for the current US patent document.
• Links to FreePatentsOnline for the current US patent document.
• Links to EPO Register for EP patent documents.