Privacy Policy

Patentative is run by Futurist IP, an Ontario, Canada company (“Patentative”, “we”, “us”), which is responsible for the personal information described here. This policy forms part of our Terms of Service.

When you use the contact form, it sends us your name, your email address, your company or firm if you give it, your message, a short label for the page you came from on our site, and the address of the referring page (its site and path only, never its query string).

When you write to us or reply to our emails, we receive what you send, including your email address.

When you visit any page, our hosting provider records technical information, such as your IP address, browser type (user agent), the page address requested and the time. This is standard for any website and is used to deliver pages and keep the service secure.

• Continuation window checker. The number you enter is sent to our server, which looks it up in the USPTO Open Data Portal, a public data source. Results are cached for 24 hours by number, so a repeat lookup isn’t sent to the USPTO again. Lookups don’t ask for your name or email, and we don’t link them to you. The number appears in the page address, so it is part of the hosting logs described above.
• Surcharge calculator. It runs entirely in your browser. The dates you enter are not sent to us or to anyone else.

• We have no user accounts or passwords, and we take no payments on this site.
• We don’t use advertising cookies, tracking pixels or third-party advertising tools.
• We don’t buy personal information or add data about you from other sources.
• We don’t sell or share personal information, including “sharing” for cross-context behavioural advertising.

Patent records and product pages we analyse are public. Names of inventors or attorneys can appear in public USPTO records; we use those records as published and don’t build profiles of people from them.

Please send only published numbers and public links. If unpublished applications, invention disclosures, draft claims or other confidential material reach us anyway, we delete them unread, don’t put them into any tool, and ask you for published numbers instead. We keep only a note that something was deleted and when, not the material itself.

We treat the fact that you asked about a particular family as commercially sensitive. We won’t publish your request, or use your family in a public example, without your written permission.

We use personal information only for these purposes:

• To prepare your review and reply by email, including copying your attorney if you asked us to. This is a step you ask us to take before any agreement, and then the service itself (for GDPR and UK GDPR readers: Article 6(1)(b)).
• To follow up on your request and answer your questions about it, and to keep a record of what we sent. This is in our legitimate interest in running the service (Article 6(1)(f)).
• To keep the site secure and working, for example to block spam submissions and automated abuse of the tools (legitimate interests).
• To understand which pages and sources bring requests, using the arrival details in section 2 and aggregate visit counts, so we can improve the site (legitimate interests).
• To send occasional updates by email, only if you ticked the optional box (consent, Article 6(1)(a), and express consent under Canada’s anti-spam law). Every update has an unsubscribe link.
• To meet legal obligations, such as keeping business records or responding to lawful requests.

The analysis tools we use to prepare reports work on public patent text and public product information. We don’t use your contact details to train any model, and we don’t make decisions about you by automated means.

The site doesn’t set cookies to track you. We use privacy-friendly, cookieless analytics to count page views. It doesn’t use cookies, doesn’t follow you across other sites, and reports only aggregate figures. We don’t send your name, email or form entries to analytics.

Do Not Track. Because we don’t track visitors across other sites, the site works the same way whether or not your browser sends a Do Not Track signal.

We use a small number of service providers, who process information only on our instructions:

• Hosting: a cloud hosting provider runs the site, the contact form and the tools, and processes the hosting logs and the messages you send.
• Rate limiting: a data-storage provider keeps a shared count of our calls to the USPTO data service. It holds no personal information.
• Email: an email delivery provider sends the messages from our contact form to our inbox, and an email hosting provider keeps our mailbox.

We have no other recipients. We may disclose information if the law requires it, or to a business that takes over the service, which would remain bound by this policy.

The site and the request records are hosted in the United States. Pages are delivered through our host’s global network. We operate from Canada, so information is also accessed and handled there.

If you are in the European Economic Area or the UK, this means your information is transferred outside it. Canada is recognised by the European Commission as providing adequate protection. For transfers to the United States, we rely on the safeguards our providers offer, such as the EU-US Data Privacy Framework (and its UK extension) or standard contractual clauses.

• Request records and our emails with you: kept as long as needed to deliver your review and follow up, then deleted 24 months after our last contact with you, or sooner if you ask.
• Updates list: until you unsubscribe or withdraw consent. We then keep only what we need to make sure you aren’t emailed again.
• Hosting logs: kept by our host for a limited period under its own retention settings.
• Window checker results: cached by number for 24 hours. They contain public USPTO data, not information about you.
• Confidential material sent by mistake: deleted unread, as described in section 5.

We may keep information longer only where the law requires it.

You can ask us to:

• tell you what personal information we hold about you and give you a copy;
• correct information that is wrong or incomplete;
• delete your information;
• stop using it for a purpose, or object to our use based on legitimate interests;
• withdraw your consent to updates, at any time, without affecting anything done before.

To make a request, email contact@patentative.com with “Privacy” in the subject line. Use the email address the information relates to, so we can confirm it’s you. We reply in writing, by email, within 30 days. There is no charge. To stop updates, you can also use the unsubscribe link in any update.

Canada. We handle personal information under the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA). If you aren’t satisfied with our answer, you can complain to the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada.

EEA and UK. You have the rights in section 11, plus the right to restrict our use and to receive your information in a portable format. You can complain to your local data protection authority (list for the EEA) or, in the UK, the ICO. We’d appreciate the chance to resolve your concern first.

California. The categories of personal information we collect, their sources and purposes, and the providers we use are listed in sections 2, 6 and 8. We don’t sell or share personal information, and we don’t use or disclose sensitive personal information. You can review or correct your information as described in section 11, and we won’t treat you differently for making a request. We tell you about changes as described in section 15.

The site and the service are for professionals and are not directed to anyone under 18. We don’t knowingly collect information from children. If you believe a child has sent us information, tell us and we will delete it.

The site is served only over encrypted connections (HTTPS). Access to request records is limited to the people who prepare reviews. We collect only what the review needs, and the form strips query strings from referring addresses so they don’t carry personal details. No system is perfectly secure; if a breach affects your information and creates a real risk of harm, we will tell you and the relevant authorities as the law requires.

We may update this policy. The effective date at the top of this page shows when it last changed. If a change materially affects how we use information we already hold, we will tell the people affected by email before it applies. We won’t use information for a new purpose without asking where the law requires consent.

For questions about this policy or your information, email contact@patentative.com. We answer in writing, by email.

Futurist IP, an Ontario, Canada company, trading as Patentative.