USPTO: ~$27.8M for patent-search AI models — a new Accenture Federal contract under the "USPTO Efficiency Act" (USAspending)

1Awarded under the USPTO Efficiency Act

The notable point is that this action is awarded "pursuant to the USPTO Efficiency Act." The USPTO has long worked on applying AI to patent search (the core task of finding prior art relevant to a filed invention among vast literature); this site also features another of the agency's patent-search AI contracts (~$44.1M, 2019–2023).

2Positioned as continuation and expansion

This contract represents the continuation/expansion of that work, apparently backed by statute. The specific provisions and content of the act are beyond this data's scope, so we do not assert them; refer to primary sources.

3How contract periods are distributed

Across the 222 federal spending records this site holds as of 2026-09-01, the median contract period is 729 days. The shortest is 20 days and the longest 2,513; 49 run under a year and 91 run beyond two.

The spread centres on roughly two years and runs wide in both directions. Research is cut into short stretches while operation and maintenance are taken long, and both sit in the same set. Procurement that becomes part of the work itself, as a patent-search system does, continues after development ends and leans to the longer side.