Privacy

This page describes what examinersearch.com collects, where it goes, and how long it is kept. Examiner Search is a one-person practice — Michael W. Smith, a former USPTO patent examiner — so “we” below means one person, and nobody else sees what you send.

What you send us on the search form

The form at /start asks for patent numbers, your deadline, any art you already have, your name, email, firm, and optionally your internal matter number. That is stored in Google Cloud Firestore in the United States and is readable only by Michael W. Smith, through a signed-in account. It is never public, and the database is configured so that submissions can be written but not read back by anyone else.

A request tells us what patent you are interested in and why, which in litigation can itself be sensitive. It is treated as confidential from the moment it arrives, whether or not we end up working together, and it is not shared with anyone.

Analytics

This site uses Cloudflare Web Analytics, which is cookieless. It records page views, the page you came from, your country and browser type. It does not use cookies, does not fingerprint you, does not track you across other sites, and does not identify individual visitors. There is no cookie banner on this site because there are no tracking cookies to consent to.

Links in our emails point at addresses like /r/… so we can tell whether a message was read at all. That records the page and the campaign, not who you are.

We also use Google Search Console, which reports aggregate search terms and click counts from Google's own index. It contains no personal data and we cannot see who searched.

Booking a call

Bookings use Google Calendar Appointment Schedules. Google collects your name, email and your answers to its form, subject to Google's privacy policy. We use it to prepare for the call and, if we work together, to scope the engagement.

Email

Whatever you send. Correspondence is held in Gmail and used to answer you and to carry out the work. It is not forwarded, sold, or used to market anything to anyone else.

Hosting

The site runs on Firebase Hosting (Google Cloud), which keeps standard server logs — IP address, timestamp, user agent — for operational purposes.

What we never do

• › Sell or rent your data or contact details.
• › Train AI models on your data or on the substance of a client matter.
• › Tell anyone which patents you asked about, or that you asked at all.
• › Use tracking cookies, advertising pixels, session recording or heatmaps.

Conflicts

Every request is checked for conflicts before it is accepted, and we may decline. Where we decline, we keep a record that the request was made and why it was refused — that record is what stops us later taking a matter we should not. It is not shared with anyone, including the party on the other side.

How long we keep it

Requests and correspondence are kept for as long as the practice runs, because a search we did years ago is often the reason we can decline a conflicting matter today. You can ask for yours to be deleted and we will, except where keeping the fact of a declined request is what prevents a conflict.

Your rights

Ask what we hold about you, ask for a copy, or ask us to delete it: michael@examinersearch.com. We answer within 30 days.

During an engagement

Once you engage us, how your material is handled is set out in the engagement letter for that matter, which includes a confidentiality clause. That letter governs; this page does not override it.

Changes

This policy changes when what the site actually does changes. Material changes are posted here with a new date above.

Contact

Michael W. Smith · Little Elm, TX · michael@examinersearch.com · 469-213-1254