Patent monitoring: alerts for competitor patents, new filings and legal status

What patent monitoring covers

A record 3.7 million patent applications were filed worldwide in 2024, according to WIPO, and the European Patent Office received over 200,000 in 2025. Patent monitoring narrows that down to the filings and patents that can affect you, and it splits into four jobs:

A patent watch service, in the industry's sense, usually means the first two: a saved search, run on a schedule, with the new hits sent to you or your patent attorney. The third and fourth concern patents you already know, which is where the EPO's Register Alert and page monitoring fit best. For the rest of a rival's public footprint, see how to monitor competitors.

When patent information changes, and the deadlines it starts

Patent offices publish on a fixed weekly rhythm, and most of the deadlines a watch protects are counted from those dates:

Maintenance fees apply to utility patents, not design or plant patents. At the USPTO's large-entity rates the three payments are $2,150, $4,040 and $8,280, and the owner decides at each one whether a patent is still worth keeping. A lapse is not always final. The USPTO can accept a late payment if the delay was unintentional, which restores the patent, so check the USPTO's record before acting on one.

These deadlines are summaries of the statutes linked below, not legal advice. Confirm any deadline for a specific patent with a patent attorney.

Because of that weekly rhythm, coverage matters more than speed in patent monitoring. Missing a publication can cost you a window that does not reopen, and hearing about it a day later costs nothing.

Free patent alerts compared

You can cover part of patent monitoring without paying, if you know which tool does what. Checked on 11 October 2026:

A saved search in PATENTSCOPE, or in The Lens with a commercial licence, covers much of competitor and technology watching, and Register Alert covers the European files you already follow. What the free tools do not give you is alerts on legal status across many offices, or analysis of what a new filing means.

Patent monitoring software and services compared

Nearly all paid patent monitoring services are sold by quote. This is what each vendor says about its monitoring on its own pages:

Choose by the job. For competitor and technology watching, the platforms (Derwent, PatSnap, Orbit, PatBase, PatSeer) run the searches and collect the hits in one place. For legal status on a fixed list of patents, Orbit's Legal Status Monitor, PatSeer and Derwent's watched records are built for it. If you need a person to triage the hits, ask whether a service includes analysts or only software.

Monitor a competitor's key patents with Website Change Tracker

Page monitors do not search patent databases; saved searches and paid services do. Website Change Tracker watches pages you name and tells you what changed on them. We tested patent pages from our own servers on 11 October 2026, and the one that works best is a patent's own page on Google Patents.

A US patent's page on Google Patents shows its legal status, such as 'Active', and a timeline of events, including filing, publication, grant, reassignments and the anticipated expiration. On Ember's US patent 9,035,222, the timeline lists the assignment to Piatto Technologies in 2014. It then lists a transfer to Oromo Technologies in 2015, and Oromo's change of name to Ember Technologies that year. An expired patent says so: US 6,883,201 reads 'Expired - Lifetime, expires 2023-05-23'.

Google labels the status 'an assumption and is not a legal conclusion', so treat an alert as a reason to check the office record. Other patent sources did not work. Google Patents search results, the EPO Register, Espacenet, Justia and FreePatentsOnline came back empty or refused our checker, and PATENTSCOPE answered with a captcha. For new filings, use a saved search in PATENTSCOPE or a paid service.

1. 1Open the patent on Google Patents and copy its address, such as patents.google.com/patent/US9035222B2/en.
2. 2Create an account on Starter or above, which adds CSS selectors, and add the address as a page to monitor.
3. 3Point a CSS selector at the status and the timeline: dd[itemprop="legalStatusIfi"], dd[itemprop="events"]. A whole Google Patents page can run to about a million characters, as US 9,035,222 does, which is more than our checker keeps for one page. The selector cut that patent to about 5,000.
4. 4Add a plain-English rule such as 'tell me when the legal status changes, the patent is reassigned, or a new event is added'.
5. 5Leave the check at daily. Patent events are published weekly, so hourly checks gain nothing.

Monitor competitors' virtual patent marking pages

Since the America Invents Act was signed on 16 September 2011, a patent owner can mark a product with 'patent' or 'pat.' and a web address instead of the patent numbers. The page has to be one that 'associates the patented article with the number of the patent'. Marking matters to the owner: without it, damages for infringement only run from when the infringer was notified. A 2014 USPTO report found that virtual marking had 'likely met its intended objectives'.

Many companies that sell hardware keep marking pages, and update them as patents are granted and products launch. A change to a rival's list is a dated signal: a new patent on a product you compete with, a new product, or a patent they have stopped claiming. Read removals carefully, though. Marking a product with an expired patent that covered it is not false marking, so some lists keep old numbers. iRobot's Roomba 600 entry still includes U.S. Pat. No. 6,883,201, which Google Patents lists as expired in 2023.

We tried patent pages at 21 companies from our servers on 11 October 2026:

• Eleven came back usable. Ten list their patents as text: Abbott (diabetes products), Ember, iRobot, Milwaukee Tool, Oura, Peloton, Sonos, Therabody, Traeger and Vitamix. Peloton's says 'This page shall serve as notice under 35 U.S.C. § 287(a)' above the patents for each product. The eleventh, Logitech, lists each version of its PDF by date, such as 'Logitech Patent List - December 1, 2025', so a monitor on the page tells you when a new list goes up.
• Four keep the list in a PDF, which our checker does not read. Medtronic's patents address redirects to a PDF, and Bose's list is a PDF. Boston Scientific and Stanley Black & Decker link to one without a date in the link text, so a new version would not show up as a change.
• Six refused our checker outright.

Monitor a marking page with a rule such as 'tell me when a patent is added or removed for any product'. Logitech has posted four versions of its list since April 2020, so daily checks on Basic are plenty.

Which plan do you need for patent monitoring?

Patent events are published weekly, so check frequency matters less than how many pages you follow, whether you need a selector, and where the alert goes:

Billed yearly, Basic is $4 a month, Starter $24 and Pro $120. Use a saved search or a paid service to find new filings, Register Alert for the European files you follow, and Website Change Tracker for the specific patents and marking pages you already know matter. For trademarks, see trademark monitoring. Every plan is on the pricing page.