Glossary

Short definitions of the intellectual-property and API terms you will meet across these docs, written for developers who are new to the patent world. Each entry links to the page that covers the topic in depth. If you are just starting out, read Getting started first. This page works best as a lookup reference.

Term	Definition
Annuity	A maintenance fee that must be paid to a patent office at regular intervals (usually yearly) to keep a patent in force. Miss it and the patent lapses. Each annuity falling due is represented in the API as an event of type RENEWAL, with renewal.annuityYear indicating which year of the patent's life the fee covers.
API key	Your credential for the API: a secret sent in the x-api-key header on every request. Each key identifies your tenant, carries a set of scopes and a daily rate limit, and can expire. An expired key yields 401 with code api_key_expired. See Authentication.
Applicant	The entity that filed the patent application. Its size category is exposed as the patent's applicantType (MICRO, SMALL, LARGE), which some offices use to grant reduced official fees. Returned by getPatent.
Component (fee)	One line of a fee breakdown: components[].type is OFFICE (the office's official fee), AGENT (local agent's fee), RENEWR (Renewr's service fee), or GRACE_PERIOD (late-payment surcharge). A component that does not apply is absent, never null; amounts are decimal strings that sum to total. See Fees and FX.
Decision	What you tell Renewr to do with a due event: PROCEED (pay the annuity), SKIP_THIS_TIME (do not pay this occurrence through Renewr; future events are kept), or DROP (abandon the patent; all remaining future events are deleted). Sent via postPatentInstructions; see Instructions and instructability.
DROP chain	The rule that DROP is terminal: once a patent is dropped, no later event of that patent can be instructed. It is enforced structurally: only the earliest un-instructed event is instructable, and executing a DROP deletes every remaining future event. The error code inconsistent_drop_chain (422) is reserved for violations. See Instructions and instructability.
Due date	The event's dueDate: the calendar date (YYYY-MM-DD) by which the annuity must be paid to the office. After it passes, the office may still accept payment during the grace period, with a surcharge. See Events and due periods.
Due period	A live-computed urgency bucket, duePeriod, placing an event relative to its deadline: UPCOMING, CURRENT, LATE, GRACE_PERIOD, or LAPSED. Treat it as informative only; use the event's instructability to know whether you can act. See Events and due periods.
Event	One dated obligation on a patent. Today the only kind is eventType: "RENEWAL" (one annuity falling due); the enum is open, so ignore kinds you do not handle. Read events per patent via getPatentEvents or across your whole portfolio via getPatentEventsByPeriod.
Exchange-rate freeze	A per-tenant capture of exchange rates for one calendar month (yearMonth, YYYY-MM), created with putExchangeRateFreeze. Fee estimates for events due in a frozen month are computed with the frozen rates instead of live ones (isFxRateFrozen: true), giving you price certainty for budgeting. See Fees and FX.
Fees	The unified cost object for an event, returned by getPatentEventFees (and inline via include=fees on getPatentEventsByPeriod): a total decimal string in your invoice currency, broken down into components. feesStatus tells you whether the amounts are ESTIMATED (a projection) or INVOICED (final). See Fees and FX.
Grace period	A statutory extra window after the due date during which the office still accepts payment, with a surcharge (the GRACE_PERIOD fee component). It ends at gracePeriodEndDate; after that the patent is lapsed. See Events and due periods.
Instructability	The instructability object present on every event, telling you whether and how it can be instructed right now: isAllowed, allowedDecisions, blockedReason (ALREADY_INSTRUCTED, TOO_EARLY, EARLIER_EVENT_PENDING), opensAt, and mode. It is computed from the same rules the instruction endpoint enforces, so what it says is what the API accepts. See Instructions and instructability.
Instruction	Your decision on one event, posted via postPatentInstructions. In the only mode available today (DIRECT) it is executed immediately and synchronously, and cannot be modified through the API afterwards. See Instructions and instructability.
Instruction receipt	Your proof of order: the response of a successful instruction POST (object: "instructionReceipt", with its reference, number, and the executed instructions), also downloadable as a PDF via getInstructionReceiptDocument. See Downloading documents.
Invoice	Renewr's bill to you. One invoice aggregates fee lines across many patents and events; each fees[] line carries eventId and patent back-references, so a single fetch is self-sufficient. Read via getInvoices and getInvoice; the per-event invoice PDF is at getInvoiceDocument.
Lapse / Lapsed	A patent lapses when an annuity is not paid before the end of the grace period: the right dies at the office and normally cannot be revived. It appears as patent status: "LAPSED" and event duePeriod: "LAPSED"; on a lapsed event, PROCEED is no longer offered as a decision. See Lifecycle.
Office	The IP authority that collects the fee: a national patent office (FR, US, JP, …) or a regional/international authority (EP European Patent Office, EA Eurasian, WO WIPO). The field is named office rather than country because the value is an authority code that does not always designate a country. See Conventions.
Official receipt	The patent office's proof that the annuity was actually paid, recorded by Renewr at the end of fulfilment (processingStatus: "FULFILLED"). Download the PDF via getOfficialReceiptDocument. See Downloading documents.
opensAt	A field of instructability: the calendar date the instruction window opens, defined as the first day of the month two months before the due month (e.g. dueDate 2026-09-30 gives opensAt 2026-07-01). Before that date, instructing the event is blocked with reason TOO_EARLY. See Instructions and instructability and the Monthly renewal cycle.
Owner	The patent proprietor, exposed as a display name (owner); co-proprietors are listed in secondaryOwners. You can filter the cross-portfolio event list by owner via the owners parameter of getPatentEventsByPeriod.
Patent (id vs providerId)	Every patent carries two identifiers: id, the opaque, stable Renewr UUID used in all URL paths, and providerId, your own reference recorded at import. To look a patent up by your reference, filter getPatents with ?providerId= (exact match; a miss returns an empty page and never a 404). See Conventions.
processingStatus	How far Renewr has taken an event through its execution pipeline: NOT_INSTRUCTED → INSTRUCTED → PAYMENT_SENT → PAYMENT_CONFIRMED → FULFILLED (happy terminal state) or UNPROCESSABLE (problem terminal state; contact support). Poll it via getPatentEvent; see Lifecycle.
Provider id	Shorthand for providerId: the identifier your own system uses for a patent. Renewr stores it verbatim and echoes it back wherever a patent is referenced (patent: { id, providerId }), so you can join API data to your records without a mapping table. See Syncing data.
Renewal	The act of paying an annuity to keep a patent in force, and the only event type today (eventType: "RENEWAL"). The event's renewal object carries annuityYear and, only when it differs from it, paymentSequenceNumber. See Events and due periods.
Scope	A permission attached to your API key that controls which endpoints it may call: patents:read, patents:instructions:write, invoices:read, exchange-rate-freezes:write. Calling an endpoint without the required scope yields 403 with code insufficient_scope. See Authentication.

Looking for exhaustive field lists?

This page defines vocabulary. For the complete wire schema of each resource (every field, type, and enum) use the per-endpoint reference pages, starting from getPatents. For error codes, see Errors.