kipris-cli — Korean Patent / Trademark / Design search (KIPRIS Plus)

Five subcommands that wrap the KIPRIS Plus OpenAPI (특허청 한국특허정보원) — Korea's authoritative IP database covering ~5M patents, ~6M trademarks, ~1M designs. Every endpoint returns XML; this skill normalizes it to JSONL for AI-agent consumption.

Why this matters: Korean IP lookups are otherwise locked behind kipris.or.kr's web UI. AI agents doing prior-art search, M&A target diligence, or brand-name availability checks need clean JSON access. This is the only ClawHub skill covering KIPRIS at the time of publish.

Quick start

export KIPRIS_PLUS_KEY="\x3Cyour-32-char-key>"   # from plus.kipris.or.kr (free, ~1d approval)

# Patent search by keyword
bin/kipris-cli patent --word "양자컴퓨팅" --rows 10

# Trademark availability check
bin/kipris-cli trademark --word "AURORA" --rows 5

# Design search
bin/kipris-cli design --word "smart watch"

# Patent bibliographic detail by application number
bin/kipris-cli patent-detail --app-no 1020230012345

# Search patents by applicant name (개인/법인)
bin/kipris-cli applicant --name "삼성전자주식회사" --rows 20

Subcommands

Common flags

• --word "\x3Cquery>" — free-text Korean or English (UTF-8)
• --app-no \x3C13-digit> — 출원번호 (1020230012345 = 특허, 4020210012345 = 상표, 3020230012345 = 디자인)
• --rows N — page size (default 30, max 500)
• --page N — 1-indexed page (default 1)
• --format json|xml|jsonl — output (default jsonl)
• --key \x3CKEY> — override $KIPRIS_PLUS_KEY

Patent-specific filters (subcommand patent)

• --applicant "\x3Cname>" — 출원인명
• --inventor "\x3Cname>" — 발명자명
• --ipc "\x3Ccode>" — IPC 분류 (e.g. G06N)
• --pat true|false — include 특허 (default true)
• --utility true|false — include 실용신안 (default true)
• --last-update YYYYMMDD — 최종변경일 since

Trademark-specific filters (subcommand trademark)

• --applicant "\x3Cname>"
• --class "\x3CNICE int>" — 상품분류 (NICE classification 1-45)
• --reg-status "registered|pending|rejected|expired" — 권리상태
• --start-date YYYYMMDD / --end-date YYYYMMDD — 출원일 range

Output schema (JSONL)

Each line is one record (patent/TM/design). Common fields normalized across types:

{
  "type": "patent",
  "app_no": "1020230012345",
  "title_ko": "양자 회로 최적화 방법 및 장치",
  "title_en": "Method and apparatus for quantum circuit optimization",
  "applicant": "삼성전자주식회사",
  "inventors": ["홍길동", "김철수"],
  "app_date": "20230101",
  "reg_no": null,
  "reg_date": null,
  "pub_no": "1020240054321",
  "pub_date": "20240715",
  "ipc": ["G06N10/40", "G06F17/14"],
  "abstract": "..."
}

Trademarks add nice_class, tm_kind (문자/도형/입체); designs add locarno_class, parts.

Setup — getting a KIPRIS_PLUS_KEY

1. Sign up at \x3Chttps://plus.kipris.or.kr> (free; corporate or individual).
2. 마이페이지 → API 신청 → 무료 quota (월 10,000건).
3. Approval is typically same-business-day for personal, 2-3 days for corporate.
4. Copy the 32-char ServiceKey and export KIPRIS_PLUS_KEY=....

⚠️ The legacy kipris.or.kr API endpoints have been deprecated since 2024Q4. This skill uses the current plus.kipris.or.kr/kipo-api/kipi/... paths.

Examples

• examples/competitor-patent-watch.sh — daily JSONL feed of new patents filed by a competitor (paginated + dedup).
• examples/brand-availability-check.sh — check if a brand name has TM filings in NICE classes 9, 35, 42 (typical SaaS classes).
• examples/m-and-a-ip-snapshot.sh — given a 사업자등록번호 (via nts-bizno-cli) → corporate name → all KIPRIS filings → consolidated CSV. Pairs naturally with opendart-cli for full M&A due-diligence chain.

Related skills

• opendart-cli — corporate disclosures (pair for IP-vs-financial due diligence)
• nts-bizno-cli — KYB business-number lookup (anchor entity name)
• juso-address-cli — registered address resolution
• kosis-cli — R&D investment statistics overlay

Limits

• Quota: free tier is 10,000 calls/month. Each patent --rows 30 --page 1 = 1 call. The skill caches nothing — caller is responsible for pagination throttling.
• Latency: typical 200–800ms per call.
• Rate limit: 30 req/sec hard cap from KIPRIS Plus. Bulk operations should sleep 0.05s between calls.

License

MIT-0. No warranty. Built using only the publicly documented KIPRIS Plus OpenAPI specification.