About Cipo
Cipo is an MCP server for searching Canadian patents and applications by owner or applicant, and retrieving individual bibliographic records. It queries CIPO’s public search service live and can also run locally over stdio.
Key features
- 01Search by current owner or applicant
- 02Retrieve patent status and dates
- 03View owners, inventors, and IPC classification
- 04Run locally over stdio
Use cases
- 01Find Canadian patents filed by or held by a company
- 02Check an application’s status and dates
- 03Review patent inventors and classification
MCP support
It exposes patent search and record lookup tools to MCP clients. Connect through a Pipeworx remote endpoint or run locally to access only this pack’s tools.
Configuration
Remote servers need no local install. Pick your client, then copy the config or install in one click.
https://gateway.pipeworx.io/cipo/mcpclaude mcp add --transport http pipeworx-io-cipo https://gateway.pipeworx.io/cipo/mcp{"mcpServers":{"pipeworx-io-cipo":{"type":"http","url":"https://gateway.pipeworx.io/cipo/mcp"}}}Open in Cursor{"servers":{"pipeworx-io-cipo":{"type":"http","url":"https://gateway.pipeworx.io/cipo/mcp"}}}Open in VS Code{"mcpServers":{"pipeworx-io-cipo":{"type":"http","url":"https://gateway.pipeworx.io/cipo/mcp"}}}{"mcpServers":{"pipeworx-io-cipo":{"serverUrl":"https://gateway.pipeworx.io/cipo/mcp"}}}Run commands in a terminal; paste JSON into the client’s MCP config and restart. Servers that need sign-in will prompt on first connect.
Tools
Details
From the project README@pipeworx/cipo
Canadian patents and patent applications — search by owner or applicant name, or look up one record by number for its status, filing date and issue date.
Part of Pipeworx — an MCP gateway connecting AI agents to 1866+ live data sources. This is an independent, unofficial integration — not affiliated with, endorsed by, or published by the upstream provider.
Tools
search_cipo_patents(name, role, limit)— search by current owner or applicant name and get back matching patents/applications: number, title, relevance.roleis"owner"(current owner of record) or"applicant"(party that filed); these can differ after an assignment.get_cipo_patent(number)— one patent/application's full bibliographic record: English/French title, current status, filing date, issue/grant date (blank until granted), owners, applicants, inventors, IPC classification.
Auth
Keyless. No registration, no API key.
Data sources
- Canadian Intellectual Property Office (CIPO), Canadian Patents Database — every patent application filed in Canada and every patent granted by Canada, Canadian-origin or foreign-origin alike. Live per-request calls against CIPO's own public search service; nothing is downloaded or mirrored.
Notes
- A patent that has only been filed, not yet granted, has an empty
issued_date— that is CIPO's own data, not a missing field on our side. filing_dateis whichever CIPO calls the earliest filing event for that record — the domestic filed date for most applications, or the PCT filing date for one that entered Canada via the PCT national phase. Both answer "when was this filed."- Numbers are CIPO patent/application numbers, at most 7 digits. A "CA" prefix, spaces or dashes in the input are stripped automatically.
- CIPO's own CPD has had intermittent data-quality issues since its 2024 "Next Generation Patents" migration (their notice, not ours) — status fields on some records may lag or show as blank even when the application is active. That is upstream, and this pack surfaces whatever CIPO currently reports.
Quick Start
Add to your MCP client (Claude Desktop, Cursor, Windsurf, etc.):
{
"mcpServers": {
"cipo": {
"url": "https://gateway.pipeworx.io/cipo/mcp"
}
}
}
What this endpoint actually serves
tools/list at https://gateway.pipeworx.io/cipo/mcp returns the tools in the table
above plus the shared Pipeworx meta-tools — ask_pipeworx,
discover_tools, search_within, remember/recall and the rest of the
gateway-wide set. So the tool count you see is larger than this table: a
single-pack endpoint currently lists roughly 30 shared tools alongside the
pack's own. The connection's initialize response states its exact scope, and
is the authoritative answer for a given day.
This is deliberate, not multiplexing by accident. The meta-tools are what let a
scoped connection answer a question this pack does not cover — via
ask_pipeworx, which routes across the whole catalog — without you adding a
second MCP server. There is currently no way to mount a pack endpoint without
them; if the extra schemas cost you more context than the routing is worth,
connect to the full gateway once rather than to several pack endpoints.
Or connect to the full Pipeworx gateway to get every pack's tools listed directly, instead of just this one's:
{
"mcpServers": {
"pipeworx": {
"url": "https://gateway.pipeworx.io/mcp"
}
}
}
Both URLs reach the same gateway and the same 1866+ data sources. The
only difference is which pack's tools are listed directly; ask_pipeworx
reaches all of them from either one.
No MCP client? Call it over HTTP
curl -X POST https://gateway.pipeworx.io/v1/tools/search_cipo_patents \
-H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
-d '{"name":"Shopify Inc.","role":"applicant","limit":5}'
No account needed for the first calls. Inspect any tool: GET https://gateway.pipeworx.io/v1/tools/search_cipo_patents. Find one: POST https://gateway.pipeworx.io/v1/tools/search_packs with {"query":"..."}.
Standalone (no gateway account)
This package also runs as a local stdio MCP server — no Pipeworx account, no gateway round-trip:
{
"mcpServers": {
"cipo": {
"command": "npx",
"args": ["-y", "@pipeworx/mcp-cipo"]
}
}
}
Or run it directly to confirm it starts:
npx -y @pipeworx/mcp-cipo
It speaks MCP over stdin/stdout and answers initialize/tools/list/tools/call
for only this pack's tools — none of the shared meta-tools the gateway
connection above adds. Same source, same tools, no ask_pipeworx routing.
Using with ask_pipeworx
Instead of calling tools directly, you can ask questions in plain English — this works on the pack endpoint above as well as on the full gateway:
ask_pipeworx({ question: "your question about Cipo data" })
The gateway picks the right tool and fills the arguments automatically.
More
License
MIT
Comments
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