About Patent Yard
A free register of inventions that anyone in the US may now build.
Every week, thousands of US patents stop being enforceable: owners stop paying maintenance fees, terms run out, and applications are quietly abandoned. The inventions in them become free for anyone to make, use and sell in the US. Most are never looked at again.
Patent Yard finds the ones a small team could actually build, explains each in plain English, shows its original drawings and full text, and checks every listing against official USPTO records every day. Builders can reserve a patent so others know it's taken, and take it to Claude to turn it into a new, patentable invention.
What we promise
- Sources first. Every status comes from an official USPTO record, and every patent page links to it and to independent places to cross-check.
- Nothing invented. Drawings, claims and descriptions are the patent's own. Our names, summaries and modern angles are labeled as ours.
- Free. No ads, no paywall, no tracking. AI work runs in your own Claude account.
Today
443 patents across 14 fields: 286 lapsed for an unpaid fee, 70 past their full term and 87 likely abandoned applications. In the past year the Official Gazette recorded 180,980 fee lapses and 2,719 reinstatements.
Not legal advice
Patent Yard is not a law firm and is not affiliated with the United States Patent and Trademark Office. Read the disclaimer before relying on anything here.