Patent Portal Privacy Notice

This notice applies specifically to the Patent/PCT portal and is separate from the ResearchVault research-paper service.

Information we process

Identity and contact data, Inventor/Applicant roles, confidential technical disclosures, engineering files, agreements, electronic-signature evidence, document hashes, OTP evidence, hashed IP and User-Agent data, invoices, payment records and case events.

Purpose

Patentability assessment, invention development, agreement management, filing support, client communication, accounting and maintenance of an auditable case history.

Storage

Patent case metadata is stored in a dedicated Cloudflare D1 database. Confidential files are stored in a private Backblaze B2 bucket and are handled through the Patent API; they are not exposed through permanent public URLs. Uploaded documents may remain in a restricted review state until approved for client visibility.

Access control

Clients can access only cases associated with their authenticated account. Administrative access is separately restricted and should be protected with strong production access controls and MFA.

Retention

Because patent matters involve contractual and intellectual-property records, retention periods may differ from the research-paper service. Retention or deletion must be coordinated with the contractual and legal requirements applicable to each case.

Payments

The Patent Portal does not store sensitive payment-card data. Only transaction identifiers, amounts, providers, statuses and necessary payment evidence are retained.

Security

Security controls include authenticated sessions, one-time passwords, SHA-256 document hashing, HMAC-based evidence, private encrypted file storage, access control and case event logging.