When ClaimHit returns a list of potential infringers, the useful question is not "what is the score", it is "how was each candidate confirmed." ClaimHit answers that directly: every result you see was confirmed on public sources, and those sources are listed next to it so you can open them yourself.
This matters practically. A result with a single thin source on a product with limited public documentation can be more worth investigating than one with a stack of marketing pages. The sources tell you where the evidence stands today, not where the infringement case ends up.
Why a single AI output is not enough
Every AI model has blind spots. Training data coverage varies, different models weight evidence sources differently, and reasoning patterns applied to the same claim language can diverge significantly between providers.
A single model naming a product is a starting point, nothing more, models can and do hallucinate plausible-sounding products that do not exist, or attribute a real product to the wrong manufacturer. So ClaimHit never treats a model's output as an answer. It treats it as a lead to be checked.
That is the core idea: models propose, evidence decides. Several independent frontier models, from different providers, each propose candidates in parallel. Convergence between them is a useful early signal, but it is not the final word. Every candidate, however many models named it, then has to survive verification against live web evidence.
Stage 1: Parallel candidate discovery
ClaimHit runs several frontier models from different providers in parallel against your patent's inventive contribution. Each independently proposes products, companies, and technical standards that may implement the claimed invention.
Using models from different providers is deliberate. They have different training data and different failure modes, so a candidate that several of them surface independently is less likely to be a single model's hallucination. But this stage only produces leads, nothing here has been confirmed yet.
Stage 2: Live web grounding
Every proposed candidate is then searched for on the live web, semantic and keyword search across manufacturer sites, datasheets, regulatory filings, and technical documentation. ClaimHit is looking for a real, reachable page that actually describes the product the models named.
This is where most hallucinated or mis-attributed candidates fall away: if a model invented a product, or attached a real product to the wrong company, there is usually no manufacturer page to back it up.
The pipeline is built around one principle: a model naming a product is a hypothesis, not a finding. Nothing reaches your results as a confirmed lead until it has been checked against evidence that exists outside the model.
Stage 3: Noise filtering and category-fit
Before verification, ClaimHit removes structural noise, patent-database pages, academic aggregators, articles and guides that mention the technology but are not products, and entries that mimic a manufacturer page without being one.
It then checks category fit: is the candidate actually in the product class the patent covers? A patent on a bimodal HDPE pipe resin should surface resin and pipe manufacturers, not a testing laboratory or a recycled-plastics trader that happens to mention polyethylene. Candidates in the wrong product class are dropped here.
Stage 4: Manufacturer-page verification
For surviving candidates, ClaimHit attempts to confirm the product on the manufacturer's own domain, fetching the page, checking it is reachable, and matching the product name and claim-relevant terms against the page content.
The outcome of this stage decides what you see. A candidate confirmed on the manufacturer's own page, with claim-relevant content and verifiable sources, becomes a result. A candidate that the models proposed but that could not be confirmed is dropped rather than shown with a caveat.
A result means the candidate was confirmed on public sources with claim-relevant content. Every result is a lead worth investigating; none is a determination of infringement.
What a result does not tell you
Results are research signals, not legal determinations. They tell you which candidates have public evidence behind them right now, nothing more.
Infringement is a legal conclusion that requires claim construction, prosecution-history analysis, and a qualified patent attorney. ClaimHit's job is to make the first phase, finding and verifying the candidates worth a closer look, fast and evidence-backed, so attorney time goes to the targets that actually warrant it.
Treat any result as a starting point for qualified patent counsel, not a conclusion.