Enrich new HubSpot companies with US patent data
When a new company lands in HubSpot, look up its US patent footprint and write a quick R&D profile back into the record.
Build an agent workflow that enriches a newly created HubSpot company with its US patent footprint, so sales and BD reps can see at a glance how R&D heavy a target is.
Trigger: a HubSpot outgoing webhook that fires on company.creation. The webhook payload carries the new company's objectId. If multiple events are batched in one webhook delivery, process each company.creation event independently.
On each fire, the agent should:
1. Pull the new company's objectId from the webhook payload. Use HubSpot 'Get Company' to fetch its properties, especially name and domain. If name is empty, stop and write nothing back.
2. Build a small set of cleaned name variants to try against the patent database: the raw name, the name with common legal suffixes removed (Inc, Inc., Incorporated, Corp, Corporation, Ltd, Limited, LLC, GmbH, S.A., PLC, Co), and the name with punctuation stripped. Dedupe.
3. Call USPTO PatentsView 'Search Assignees' with the cleaned name(s) to find the canonical disambiguated assignee. Prefer organization assignees over individuals, and when more than one plausible match comes back, prefer the assignee with the highest patent count. Capture the matched assignee_id.
4. If no assignee is matched, call HubSpot 'Update Company' with patent_count_total = 0 and patent_match_status = 'no_match', then stop. This is important so reps can tell 'we could not find them' apart from 'they really have no patents'.
5. If an assignee is matched, call PatentsView 'Search Granted Patents' filtered by that assignee_id and compute:
- patent_count_total: total granted patents for that assignee.
- patent_count_24mo: granted patents whose grant date falls within the last 24 months.
- top_tech_areas: the three most common CPC subclass titles (or WIPO field titles, whichever is more human-readable) across the assignee's patents, joined with commas.
- latest_patent_titles: the titles of the three most recently granted patents, joined with ' | '.
- last_patent_grant_date: the grant date of the single most recent granted patent, ISO yyyy-mm-dd.
- patent_match_status: 'matched'.
6. Call HubSpot 'Update Company' to write all of the above onto the company record.
Be polite to the patent API: request only the fields you actually need, and stop paginating once you have enough rows to compute the counts and the top-three lists.
Idempotency: if the workflow fires twice for the same company, the second run should produce the same result. Overwrite the properties, do not append.
Setup notes the human must complete before this can run (please surface these in the workflow's setup section):
- Create six custom company properties in HubSpot: patent_count_total (number), patent_count_24mo (number), top_tech_areas (single-line text), latest_patent_titles (multi-line text), last_patent_grant_date (date picker), patent_match_status (single-line text, or a dropdown with values 'matched' and 'no_match').
- In HubSpot, configure an outgoing webhook (via Workflows or Operations Hub) on the 'Company created' event, pointing at this workflow's webhook URL.
- Connect a HubSpot account with permission to read and update companies, and a USPTO PatentsView API key.
Additional information
What does this prompt do?
- The moment a new company is created in HubSpot, look it up in the US Patent and Trademark Office database.
- Count total granted patents and patents granted in the last 24 months so reps can gauge R&D intensity at a glance.
- Capture the top technology areas the company files in, plus the three most recent published patents.
- Write everything straight back onto the HubSpot company record using your own custom properties, with a clear flag separating 'no match found' from 'genuinely has none'.
What do I need to use this?
- A HubSpot account where new companies can fire an outgoing webhook when they are created.
- A free USPTO patent data API key. The integration includes a step-by-step signup guide.
- Six custom company properties created in HubSpot ahead of time: patent_count_total (number), patent_count_24mo (number), top_tech_areas (single-line text), latest_patent_titles (multi-line text), last_patent_grant_date (date), and patent_match_status (single-line text).
How can I customize it?
- Change the lookback window from 24 months to 12 or 36 if you care more about recency or long-term depth.
- Decide what 'no match' should do. Leave it silent, ping a Slack channel for manual review, or assign a task to a researcher.
- Add more fields if your team wants richer signal, like lead inventor, average claim count, or the company's top filing country.
Frequently asked questions
Will this work on a free HubSpot plan?
What happens if the company name does not match any patent owner?
How accurate is the name matching?
Does this cost anything beyond my HubSpot subscription?
How quickly does it run after a new company is created?
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