Patent Bots: A Complete Overview of Tools for Patent Professionals

Patent Bots is a software platform for patent attorneys designed to streamline every stage of patent preparation and prosecution, covering drafting, proofreading, office action administration, and data tools like examiner intelligence, art unit predictions, and patent family information.

Here's a look at what each Patent Bots solution provides and how it fits into your practice, whether you are a solo practitioner, a large IP firm, in-house counsel, or anything in between.

Prep & Pros Pro

Prep & Pros Pro is Patent Bots' flagship product. Serving as the core workspace for patent preparation and prosecution, it includes tools for drafting, proofreading, office action responses, and more. It runs as a Microsoft Word add-in, putting Patent Bots tools directly alongside your working document.

The drafting panel opens side-by-side with your Word document and automatically detects whether you're working on a patent application, an office action response, or a claim set, surfacing the appropriate tools for each.

Drafting Tools for Patent Applications

Navigation

The Navigation tab lets you search your Word document to quickly locate sections, claims, figures, or any other text as you draft. You can also search for terms with a breakdown by patent section.

Claims

The Claims tab provides tools for managing your claimset directly within Word.

Claim renumbering allows you to insert or remove a claim anywhere in your claimset, and instantly renumber with the click of a button. All claim numbers and dependencies update automatically in seconds, eliminating tedious manual renumbering and the human errors that come with it.

You can also insert or remove reference labels to and from claims with a single action. Particularly useful when moving between U.S. and European filings.

SEQ ID NOs

The SEQ ID NOs tab provides tools for managing biological sequence identifiers in your patent application. Work in Number Mode to use numbers to refer to SEQ ID NOs, then convert to tags when ready.

Reference Label Tracker

As you draft the detailed description, the Reference Label Tracker dynamically builds a list of reference label names and numbers, capturing each as you type. The list automatically updates as you work, ensuring consistency across the entire document. Typing autocompletes let you insert a label by typing its number followed by //, avoiding repetitive manual entry.

Figures

The Figures tab tracks all figure numbers in your document, letting you navigate directly to any figure and renumber figures with a single action.

Rules-Based Generation

With one click, generate the more routine sections of your application using rules-based AI. Patent Bots repurposes text you've already written to produce consistent, predictable output for:

  • Brief description of the figures
  • Claim summary
  • Claim clauses / embodiments
  • PowerPoint or Visio flowcharts
  • Abstract

Saved Gen AI Prompts

Use pre-written Gen AI prompts for drafting. Patent Bots provides a library of prompts covering common tasks like generating a title, drafting a background section, and more. Your firm can add organization-specific prompts for team-wide use, and you can create and save your own prompts to align with your individual drafting style.

You can attach up to three supplemental documents (e.g. the invention disclosure, prior art) to give the model added context. All AI-generated text is highlighted in the document so you know what may need additional review.

Gen AI Chat

A real-time chat interface lets you interact with AI in a less structured way during drafting. Patent Bots includes your patent text, claims, and supplemental documents as context for your prompt. Ask the AI to draft claims, suggest language, or answer questions as you work. Output can be inserted directly into the Word document with one click.

Patent Bots has zero data retention on all Gen AI tools. Inputs and outputs are never stored or used for training.

Drafting Tools for Office Action Responses

Office Action

Patent Bots automatically retrieves and displays the latest office action for your application, along with pending claims and cited prior art. From there, you can search each to find the information you need as you draft your response.

Prior Art

The Prior Art tab lets you view the full text of prior art references cited in the office action, making it easy to review and respond to rejections without leaving your Word document.

Utilities

The Utilities tab provides tools for common OA response formatting tasks:

Convert Word track changes to overstrike/underlines in your claims with a single click. Turn off Word track changes before using this tool.

Automatically set the claim status to Currently Amended for any claims that contain amendments.

Automatically generate the first sentence of the Remarks section that summarizes the status of the claims. Move the cursor to the desired location and click to generate, e.g. "Claims 1–20 are pending. Claims 3 and 5 are amended."

Gen AI Chat

The Gen AI Chat for OA responses uses the office action, your OA response text, your application, and US patent prior art as context for your prompts, giving the model everything it needs to assist with substantive response drafting.

Drafting Tools for Claim Sets

Claims

The Claims tab for claim set documents includes claim renumbering and track changes conversion tools, as described above, for managing standalone claim sets.

Gen AI Chat

Gen AI Chat for claim sets includes your claims and any supplemental documents as context, making it useful for drafting dependent claims, suggesting alternative language, or exploring claim scope.

Proofreading for Patent Applications

Patent Bots proofreading tools check for common error types and use a simple color coding system to highlight potential issues: red for confirmed errors requiring attorney attention, yellow for warnings that need review. Proofreading is available for patent applications, office action responses, and claim sets, with the available tabs varying by document type.

Overview

A summary of all proofreading results across all checks, providing a single view of everything found in the document before diving into individual tabs.

Numbering

Checks claims for numbering and dependency errors, including out-of-sequence claim numbers, broken dependency chains, and claims that depend on themselves or non-existent claims.

Antecedent Basis

Identifies antecedent basis errors: cases where a term is introduced with "the" or "said" before it has been defined with "a" or "an." Antecedent basis errors are one of the most common and consequential errors in patent drafting.

Word Support

Checks that every term used in the claims appears in the specification's detailed description. Words in the claims that are not supported in the specification may create validity and enforceability issues.

Phrase Support

Checks that key phrases from the claims also appear in the detailed description, providing a deeper level of support analysis beyond individual word matching.

Reference Labels

Checks that all reference labels used in the specification and claims are defined consistently in the figures and drawings, flagging labels that are missing or inconsistently defined.

Figure Numbers

Verifies that all figure numbers referenced in the specification are present in the figures, and that no figures exist without a corresponding description.

Patent Profanity

Flags limiting words and phrases (sometimes called "patent profanity") that may unnecessarily narrow the scope of your claims. Common examples include words like "must," "always," "only," "critical," and similar absolute terms.

Gen AI Review

Goes beyond rule-based checks to catch issues that are difficult to detect with pattern matching alone. Checks for typos, grammatical errors, and inconsistent or conflicting technology terms that human review often misses.

Proofreading for Office Action Responses

Proofreading for OA responses covers the same tabs as Proofreading for Patent Applications (Overview, Numbering, Antecedent Basis, Word Support, Phrase Support, and Gen AI Review), plus one tab unique to OA responses:

Claim Markup

Compares the current claims against a previous version (either the previous office action response or the original application) and verifies that the claim markup (strikethroughs and underlines) is accurate and complete.

Proofreading for Claim Sets

Proofreading for claim sets covers the same tabs as Proofreading for Patent Applications: Overview, Numbering, Antecedent Basis, Word Support, Phrase Support, and Gen AI Review. Art Unit Predictor is also available for claim sets when included in your subscription.

Office Action Admin Tools

The Office Action Admin tool reduces the time needed for recurring administrative tasks. Enter a US or PCT application number and Patent Bots automatically retrieves application data from the USPTO: title, applicant, inventors, docket number, examiner, art unit, and the full prosecution history, so everything is pre-populated when you generate documents.

OA Response Shells

Automatically generate a complete shell document for your next OA response. You select the response type (e.g., 37 CFR 1.111 amendment, 1.114 RCE, 1.312 after allowance), upload the previous claims (application as filed or prior OA response), and Patent Bots inserts a clean, correctly formatted version of the claims into the shell along with all application and office action data.

Subscription admins upload firm-specific Word templates using placeholder variables that Patent Bots fills automatically, including applicant, application number, docket number, examiner, art unit, practitioner details, and an AI-generated one-paragraph summary of the office action. The template system also supports specific rejection categories (§101, §102, §103), extracted objections, and a patent practitioner signature block.

IDS Forms

Patent Bots fills out USPTO Information Disclosure Statement forms (SB/08) with two convenient ways to add prior art references:

  • Paste patent numbers — Paste up to 500 U.S. or foreign patent numbers in any format and Patent Bots retrieves citation data for each.
  • Import from a public patent — Enter a U.S. patent or publication number and Patent Bots imports all references cited in that patent. Optionally import the entire patent family's citations using EPO data.

Generate the completed IDS in three formats: PDF (up to 300 patents and 50 NPLs, based on the official USPTO form), MS Word (no citation limits), or MS Excel for your own records. You can also download original PDFs and machine-translated PDFs of foreign citations in bulk. A "Previously Cited" tab tracks references already of record so you don't cite them again.

IDS forms can also be filled out for unfiled applications without entering an application number.

Client Reporting Letters

Generate client reporting letters and emails automatically from your firm's own templates. Patent Bots fills in application bibliographic data, office action details, and practitioner information using the same placeholder variable system as OA Response Shells. Placeholders include rejection summaries by category (§101, §102, §103), extracted objections, and an AI-generated one-paragraph plain-language summary of the office action.

Options include choosing a date format and optionally attaching the office action PDF and the prior art references the examiner relied on in rejections, all generated and packaged in a single step.

Word Forms

Generate Word-based documents such as assignments and declarations from custom firm templates. Like the other document generators, Word Forms use the placeholder variable system to auto-populate application and practitioner data. Word Forms also support an inventor block to easily include information for each of the inventors. Subscription admins upload firm templates and users select the template and practitioner before downloading the completed document.

USPTO Forms

Pre-fill a wide variety of standard USPTO PDF forms with application and practitioner data retrieved automatically from the USPTO. Supported forms include:

  • AIA/01 — Declaration using ADS
  • AIA/02 — Substitute Statement in Lieu of Declaration
  • AIA/24, 24a, 24b — Express Abandonment (standard, to avoid publication, with refund)
  • AIA/25, 26 — Terminal Disclaimers
  • AIA/31 — Notice of Appeal
  • AIA/40, 41 — Correct Inventorship / Update Applicant
  • AIA/47 — Maintenance Fee Address
  • AIA/82 — Transmittal for Power of Attorney
  • AIA/96 — Statement Under 37 CFR 3.73(c)
  • AIA/122, 123 — Change Correspondence Address (Application / Patent)
  • PTOL/85b — Issue Fee Transmittal
  • SB/09 — IDS under QPIDS Program
  • SB/17 — Fee Transmittal; SB/21 — Transmittal Form
  • SB/30, 30pc — RCE Transmittal (standard and Patent Center)
  • SB/35, 36, 44, 47, 133, 439 — various standard forms

Office Action Explorer

Office Action Explorer is a three-column dashboard for drafting OA responses or reviewing the work of others. Enter an application number and Patent Bots automatically retrieves the most recent office action, the current pending claims, the specification, and cited patent prior art, all displayed side by side in a resizable layout.

Office Action column (left) — Displays the full text of the most recent office action with interactive links added automatically:

  • Prior art references (by patent number and examiner-cited author name) are highlighted in red. Clicking one loads the full text of that reference in the third column.
  • Paragraph citations (e.g., [0079], ¶ 0054) are highlighted in green. Clicking one scrolls the prior art column directly to that paragraph.
  • Column and line citations (e.g., col. 2, ln. 53–62) are similarly linked and scroll the prior art column to that location.
  • 35 U.S.C. and 37 C.F.R. statute citations are linked to sources. MPEP citations are linked directly to the relevant MPEP section on the USPTO website.
  • A direct link to the examiner's Patent Bots stats page is included at the top of the column, as well as a link to open the office action PDF.

Claims & Spec column (middle) — Shows the current pending claims (with the date they reflect) and the full specification text from the patent publication, accessible via tabs. Links to PatentPlex and the publication PDF are included.

Prior Art column (right) — Initially empty; populated when you click a red prior art reference in the office action. Displays the full text of the cited reference with PatentPlex and PDF links. Paragraph and column/line citations in the office action scroll this column to the cited location.

Each column has its own independent keyword search with next/previous match navigation and a running match count, making it easy to find specific terms across the office action, claims, or prior art without leaving the interface.

Art Unit Predictor

Art Unit Predictor uses machine learning to forecast which USPTO group and art unit will be assigned to your patent application. Because grant rates vary significantly across art units, knowing your likely art unit assignment, and being able to steer away from difficult art units, can meaningfully affect prosecution outcomes. Art Unit Predictor is available via both the Patent Bots platform and the Word add-in.

The predictor analyzes your application title and claims using an ALBERT language model trained on USPTO publication data. You can run it at any point during drafting and re-run it after making claim changes to see updated predictions.

Group Predictions

Group predictions show the top three groups most likely to receive your application, out of the approximately 60 groups across the USPTO. Groups are broader than art units (the USPTO has far fewer of them), so group predictions tend to be more accurate than art unit predictions and are a useful starting point for assessing prosecution risk.

For each predicted group, the results show:

  • The group number and technology description
  • The predicted probability as a percentage, visualized in a pie chart alongside an "Other" slice representing all remaining groups
  • The historical grant rate for that group, so you can quickly identify whether a likely assignment has a favorable or unfavorable track record
  • A link to the group's full examiner statistics page on Patent Bots

The results also show the combined probability that your application will be assigned to a business method group (groups 3620, 3680, or 3690), which are among the most difficult for obtaining broad claims due to their high rates of §101 rejections.

Art Unit Predictions

Art unit predictions show the top five art units most likely to receive your application, out of approximately 500 art units across the USPTO. Because some art units are functionally indistinguishable from one another in terms of the technology they examine, Patent Bots merges those into combined groups for more meaningful predictions, reducing the prediction space to approximately 350 distinct units.

For each predicted art unit, the results show the same information as group predictions: art unit number, technology description, predicted probability with pie chart, historical grant rate, and a link to the art unit's examiner statistics. The business method art unit probability is also shown separately.

Group and art unit predictions are generated by two independent models and may not always agree. This is by design. Treat the art unit result as a second opinion alongside the group result.

Dangerous Words

After predictions are generated, you can select any of the predicted groups or art units to see which specific words in your claims and title are driving the assignment toward that group or art unit. These are called dangerous words, meaning terms whose presence in your application strongly signals to the USPTO's classification system that the application belongs in a particular technology area.

Dangerous words are identified using TF-IDF scoring: words that appear frequently in patents assigned to a given art unit but rarely across patents in general score highest. The words are highlighted directly in your claim text with color intensity proportional to their score, making it easy to see which terms are pulling your application in a particular direction.

To steer away from an undesirable group or art unit:

  • Select the group or art unit you want to avoid to see its dangerous words highlighted in your claims
  • Replace or rephrase high-scoring words throughout your application, not just in the claims but also in the specification, since the USPTO considers the full document
  • Consider adding words associated with your preferred technology area (for example, changing "intent" to "natural language intent") to pull the application toward a more favorable group
  • Re-run the predictor to see updated predictions reflecting your changes
  • Repeat for other groups or art units you want to avoid

Updates

The Art Unit Predictor models are retrained twice a year on current USPTO publication data to reflect changes at the USPTO, including reorganizations, new art units, and shifts in technology boundaries. Regular retraining keeps predictions aligned with current USPTO practice rather than relying on historical patterns that may no longer apply.

PatentPlex

PatentPlex is a patent information hub for U.S. and European patents. Enter any patent number (application, publication, or grant) and PatentPlex retrieves bibliographic data, prosecution history, and family information in real time from USPTO and EPO data sources. Each patent's overview page displays application data (app number, pub number, patent number, applicant, law firm, inventors, status, priority date, expiration date including PTA, examiner with grant rate, and art unit), along with direct links to USPTO Patent Center, Google Patents, Espacenet, USPTO Assignments, USPTO Maintenance Fee Payments, and Global Dossier. From the overview, you can also launch the patent tools described below.

Patent Family Tree

An interactive visual tree of the full patent family, generated in real time from USPTO and EPO data sources, including PCTs and foreign patents. Issued patents are shown in green; pending and other applications in yellow. Each node that has a PatentPlex page is clickable and links directly to it.

Display options let you toggle which fields appear on each node (status, application number, filing date, publication number, publication date, issue date, docket number, and title), as well as a filter to show US patents only. The tree can be panned and zoomed with your mouse, popped out into a full-screen modal, or exported as an SVG file. A sortable Family List tab shows the same data in a table format with country, all patent numbers, dates, docket number, status, and title.

Patent Timeline

An interactive zoomable timeline of key events for the patent, displayed on the overview tab. Covers key dates (priority, filing, publication, grant), prosecution events (office actions, RCEs, appeals, and responses), and post-issuance events (maintenance fee payments and expiration date, calculated including any Patent Term Adjustment). Hover over any event to see its date.

Gen AI Assistant

A two-panel chat interface (chat on the left, document viewer on the right) for asking questions about a patent using its full prosecution record and patent family claims as context. The document viewer lets you switch between the specification, claims, individual IFW documents (office actions, responses, and other prosecution documents fetched on demand), and claims for individual family members. This makes it easy to ask questions that span the prosecution history or compare claim language across the family without leaving the page.

You can ask questions like "What are the key differences between the independent claims as filed and as allowed?" or "Summarize the examiner's §103 rejections" and the assistant draws from the actual IFW documents loaded in the viewer as context.

Image File Wrapper

The full USPTO Image File Wrapper for the application, displayed in a filterable table with date, document code, description, direction, and page count for each document. Three filter views are available: all documents, interesting documents only (office actions, responses, and other substantive events), and IDS-related documents. Select any combination of documents to download as a ZIP archive or as a single combined PDF. Office actions are annotated by Patent Bots to show the rejection types present (§101, §102, §103), making it faster to identify substantive OAs at a glance.

A separate USPTO Transactions tab shows the same prosecution history keyed by USPTO transaction code rather than document code, which can be useful for searching specific event types.

Patent Analyzer

A resizable multi-column viewer showing the specification and claims of a patent side by side. Select any word or phrase with your mouse to create a "hot word" that is highlighted across all columns simultaneously, with a count of matches in each. The hot word table shows the highlighted term, how many times it appears in the spec, and how many times it appears in the claims, with navigation links. A sharing link lets you pass your highlighted view to a colleague or save it for later reference. Useful for both prosecutors checking term consistency and litigators mapping claim language to the specification.

Claim Charts

Generates a Microsoft Word claim chart for a patent's publication or grant, ready to use for infringement, invalidity, or licensing analysis. The chart is structured with one row per claim element, formatted for immediate use or further editing.

Claim Diff Tool

Easily see the differences between any two sets of patent claims. For example, you can compare as-filed claims to the claims as amended after an office action, or issued claims. You can also compare claims across family members, such as a parent and child. The Claim Diff shows two claim sets side by side and highlights differences between them, making it straightforward to identify the precise differences.

Examiner Stats

Every USPTO patent examiner has a dedicated Patent Bots statistics page with data that helps you answer the key prosecution questions: How hard is this examiner? Is an interview worth requesting? Should I appeal? Data is sourced from the USPTO and covers the last 10 years of prosecution activity.

Each examiner page also displays employment information: art unit, group, technology classes, phone, email, location, title, grade, and years of service, making it easy to understand an examiner's background and specialization at a glance.

Grant Rate & Difficulty Rating

The examiner's three-year grant rate (the percentage of applications granted within three years of the first office action) is shown alongside a case count and a comparison bar chart against the examiner's art unit and the USPTO average. The difficulty rating translates the grant rate into a plain-language label (Extremely Easy, Very Easy, Easier, Medium, Harder, Very Hard, or Extremely Hard) and a percentile rank across all USPTO examiners, with the 100th percentile being the most difficult. The grant rate tab also shows the average number of office actions per grant for the examiner versus the art unit average.

Grant Rate Timeline

A chart showing cumulative grant rate over time, measured in months from the first office action. The timeline marks the three-year grant rate milestone and, for individual examiners, the typical timing of first and second RCEs. This helps you understand not just whether an examiner grants patents, but how quickly, and whether an RCE is likely to be necessary before allowance.

Interview Benefit

Compares grant rates for cases with and without an applicant-requested interview, and calculates the net interview benefit: how many percentage points an interview increases or decreases the likelihood of allowance. Results are shown for the examiner alongside the art unit and USPTO averages, so you can judge whether this examiner responds to interviews better or worse than their peers.

Recent Dispositions

A bar chart of granted versus abandoned applications by year for recent years, followed by a table of the examiner's most recently disposed applications, including title, rejection types from office actions (§101, §102, §103), and final status. Each row links to the application's PatentPlex page for a detailed look at the prosecution history.

Appeals Statistics

Three sections answering the key appeal decision questions:

  • Appeal Outcomes — breaks outcomes into four categories: great (claims allowed without a PTAB decision), good (PTAB reversed examiner), neutral (prosecution reopened), and bad (examiner affirmed). Compares the examiner's distribution against the art unit and USPTO averages.
  • PTAB Decisions — for cases that reached the Board, shows the split between examiner reversed, affirmed in part, and affirmed, with art unit and USPTO comparisons.
  • Pre-Appeal Conference (PAC) Decisions — shows how often PAC requests result in withdrawn rejections, reopened prosecution, or proceed to a full appeal, with art unit and USPTO comparisons.

Appeals History

A detailed table of every appeal for the examiner, color-coded by outcome: green for favorable results (PTAB reversed, examiner allowed claims, or PAC withdrew rejections), yellow for neutral results (prosecution reopened), red for PTAB affirmances, gray for uninformative endings (abandonment or RCE), and white for pending appeals. Hover over any row to see the application title; click View to open the application in PatentPlex.

Updates

Statistics are updated every quarter from USPTO data so grant rates and other metrics reflect current prosecution activity.

Whether you're streamlining a solo practice or standardizing workflows across a firm, Patent Bots is built to fit the way patent professionals actually work, improving efficiency at every stage of preparation and prosecution without sacrificing attorney control. From first draft to final disposition, every tool is designed to save time, reduce errors, and sharpen the quality of your work. Start your free trial today.