Patent Figures are not copyrighted

So, I made an app that generates graphic T-shirts out of figures from a patent application. Check it out: Patent Figure Shirts

How was this made?

The USPTO has API available to get PDFs of a patent application.

Unfortunately, not many patent offices offer this. The Japanese Patent Office for example, requires the JPO's human approval to get an API key. In contrast, the USPTO API is free.

The T-shirt printing service, Printful has an API to make and sell shirts with.

Everything else falls in line once we got these two major pieces locked down.

What happens within Patent Figure Shirts?

Once the user enters the USPTO application number, an API call is made to USPTO to retrieve the PDF. The PDF is converted into a PNG. White background is removed, and finally sent to Printful to make a shirt.

The user is the redirected to the store page with the Printful order already made in the backend.