Lens Patents API

openapi: 3.0.3
info:
  title: Lens Patents API
  description: The Lens API provides programmatic access to the full corpus of Lens scholarly works and patents using a REST interface. The API supports rich Elasticsearch-style query DSL for searching scholarly publications and global patent records, with cursor-based pagination, sorting, and field projection. Authentication is via a bearer token issued from the Lens user profile.
  version: '1.0'
  contact:
    name: Lens API Support
    url: https://docs.api.lens.org/
  license:
    name: Lens API Terms
    url: https://www.lens.org/lens/terms-and-conditions
servers:
- url: https://api.lens.org
  description: Lens production API
security:
- bearerAuth: []
tags:
- name: Patents
  description: Search and retrieve global patent records.
paths:
  /patent/search:
    get:
      tags:
      - Patents
      summary: Search patents (GET)
      description: Search the Lens patents index using URL query parameters. Use the POST variant for complex Boolean queries, cursor pagination, family grouping, and stemming controls.
      parameters:
      - name: query
        in: query
        required: true
        description: Lucene-style query string.
        schema:
          type: string
      - name: size
        in: query
        schema:
          type: integer
          default: 20
      - name: from
        in: query
        schema:
          type: integer
          default: 0
      - name: sort
        in: query
        schema:
          type: string
      - name: include
        in: query
        schema:
          type: string
      - name: exclude
        in: query
        schema:
          type: string
      responses:
        '200':
          description: Successful response
          content:
            application/json:
              schema:
                $ref: '#/components/schemas/PatentResponse'
        '400':
          $ref: '#/components/responses/BadRequest'
        '401':
          $ref: '#/components/responses/Unauthorized'
        '429':
          $ref: '#/components/responses/RateLimited'
    post:
      tags:
      - Patents
      summary: Search patents (POST)
      description: Submit a structured query against the Lens patents index. Supports the full Elasticsearch-style query DSL plus patent-specific parameters such as `group_by` and `expand_by` for patent family operations, `stemming`, `language`, `regex`, and `min_score`.
      requestBody:
        required: true
        content:
          application/json:
            schema:
              $ref: '#/components/schemas/PatentRequest'
      responses:
        '200':
          description: Successful response
          content:
            application/json:
              schema:
                $ref: '#/components/schemas/PatentResponse'
        '400':
          $ref: '#/components/responses/BadRequest'
        '401':
          $ref: '#/components/responses/Unauthorized'
        '429':
          $ref: '#/components/responses/RateLimited'
  /patent/{lens_id}:
    get:
      tags:
      - Patents
      summary: Get a patent by Lens ID
      description: Retrieve a single patent record by its unique Lens identifier.
      parameters:
      - name: lens_id
        in: path
        required: true
        description: Unique Lens identifier for the patent record.
        schema:
          type: string
      responses:
        '200':
          description: Successful response
          content:
            application/json:
              schema:
                $ref: '#/components/schemas/PatentRecord'
        '401':
          $ref: '#/components/responses/Unauthorized'
        '404':
          $ref: '#/components/responses/NotFound'
components:
  schemas:
    SearchRequestBase:
      type: object
      properties:
        query:
          description: Elasticsearch-style query DSL object.
          type: object
          additionalProperties: true
        sort:
          type: array
          items:
            type: object
            additionalProperties: true
        include:
          type: array
          items:
            type: string
        exclude:
          type: array
          items:
            type: string
        size:
          type: integer
          default: 20
        from:
          type: integer
          default: 0
        scroll:
          type: string
          description: Lifespan for cursor-based pagination (e.g. "1m").
        scroll_id:
          type: string
          description: Cursor returned by a previous response for pagination.
        min_score:
          type: number
        stemming:
          type: boolean
          default: true
        regex:
          type: boolean
          default: false
      required:
      - query
    SearchResponseBase:
      type: object
      properties:
        total:
          type: integer
        results:
          type: integer
        scroll_id:
          type: string
        data:
          type: array
          items:
            type: object
            additionalProperties: true
    PatentRequest:
      allOf:
      - $ref: '#/components/schemas/SearchRequestBase'
      - type: object
        properties:
          group_by:
            type: string
            description: Group results by patent family (e.g. "family").
          expand_by:
            type: string
          language:
            type: string
            description: Language code for multi-lingual matching.
    PatentRecord:
      type: object
      description: A patent record (Lens patent schema v1.6.5).
      properties:
        lens_id:
          type: string
        jurisdiction:
          type: string
        doc_number:
          type: string
        kind:
          type: string
        date_published:
          type: string
          format: date
        publication_type:
          type: string
        biblio:
          type: object
          properties:
            invention_title:
              type: array
              items:
                type: object
                properties:
                  text:
                    type: string
                  lang:
                    type: string
            parties:
              type: object
              properties:
                applicants:
                  type: array
                  items:
                    type: object
                inventors:
                  type: array
                  items:
                    type: object
            classifications_ipcr:
              type: array
              items:
                type: object
            classifications_cpc:
              type: array
              items:
                type: object
        abstract:
          type: array
          items:
            type: object
        claims:
          type: array
          items:
            type: object
        families:
          type: object
    Error:
      type: object
      properties:
        message:
          type: string
        code:
          type: integer
    PatentResponse:
      allOf:
      - $ref: '#/components/schemas/SearchResponseBase'
      - type: object
        properties:
          data:
            type: array
            items:
              $ref: '#/components/schemas/PatentRecord'
  responses:
    RateLimited:
      description: Plan quota or rate limit exceeded
      content:
        application/json:
          schema:
            $ref: '#/components/schemas/Error'
    Unauthorized:
      description: Missing or invalid token
      content:
        application/json:
          schema:
            $ref: '#/components/schemas/Error'
    BadRequest:
      description: Malformed request
      content:
        application/json:
          schema:
            $ref: '#/components/schemas/Error'
    NotFound:
      description: Record not found
      content:
        application/json:
          schema:
            $ref: '#/components/schemas/Error'
  securitySchemes:
    bearerAuth:
      type: http
      scheme: bearer
      bearerFormat: JWT
      description: API token issued from the Lens user profile (Plans & Tokens).