You’ll need the GoVeda MCP server connected first. It takes about a minute. See Connect to Claude or ChatGPT to set it up. Once it’s connected, just ask your question; your assistant reaches for GoVeda on its own when a patent task needs it. New accounts get a 14-day free trial with 10,000 credits.
In a deal, you need to know which patents actually matter, and why. GoVeda turns a portfolio into a shortlist with reasons attached.
The prompt
Open a new chat and paste:
I’m advising an acquirer doing M&A due diligence on Sony’s patent portfolio in CMOS image sensor technology. Identify Sony’s most valuable / strategically important patents in image sensors, and for each explain what it covers and why it would matter to an acquirer — claim breadth, legal status, how foundational the tech is.
What GoVeda does behind the scenes
Diligence is a longer chain: scope the company, size the portfolio, find the important assets, then check whether they’re actually still in force. The assistant runs it end to end:
Scope the company and the area
It calls lookup_party (expanding the corporate hierarchy to catch subsidiaries) and lookup_classifications for the image-sensor codes, then sizes the portfolio with party_count.
Search by technology pillar
It runs semantic_patent_search across the key sub-areas of image sensors, so the shortlist spans the portfolio rather than one corner of it.
Rank by influence
It calls get_patent_forward_citations and uses the forward-citation count as a proxy for how foundational each candidate is, surfacing the assets later inventions lean on most.
Check claims and legal status
It pulls claims, legal status, and dates with batch_get_patents, separating assets that have expired or lapsed from the ones still in force, which is where the acquisition value sits.
You can watch it move from portfolio to a flagged shortlist in the chat:
What you get
You get a shortlist of the most strategically important patents with reasons attached, sized against the full portfolio (Sony holds roughly five thousand image-sensor patents in the US alone). GoVeda surfaces real diligence flags too, like a foundational patent the owner deliberately let lapse, and it’s explicit that these are estimates to verify, not legal advice.
Tips
Forward citations signal influence, not dollar value, so treat them as a starting point. Always confirm legal status and the current owner from the record before relying on either, and have counsel verify any patent you act on.
Next: browse more use cases or read the MCP tool reference.