This dataset identifies 90 patent families filed between 2015 and mid-2026 against aquaculture feed formulation, fishmeal replacement, insect protein and related digestibility claims. Filing activity peaked at 14 families in 2020 and has since declined, with the 2022 midpoint back down to 3 — a flat-to-declining trend rather than sustained growth. Because publication typically lags filing by around 18 months, the most recent one to two years will look thinner than they eventually turn out to be once late filings publish.

The dataset's assignee ranking includes DSM's IP management arm, Israel's marine and limnological research institute alongside its agricultural research organization's Volcani Center, and the University of Idaho working with Montana Microbial Products. Notably, every one of these top-ranked assignees shows zero new filings in the most recent year, meaning their current ranking reflects filings made several years ago rather than active recent expansion. A freedom-to-operate review should still weight their older families heavily, since citation and co-filing patterns show they remain influential.

US20180303129A1, assigned to Trustees of Dartmouth College and published in October 2018, claims a fishmeal-free and fish-oil-free aquaculture feed composition that uses marine microalgae as the source of both fatty acids and essential amino acids, tied to specific improvements in growth rate, feed conversion ratio, protein efficiency ratio, survival rate and fillet omega-3 content. It is the most-cited record in this dataset at 15 citations, which signals strong influence on later filings rather than blanket ownership of the fishmeal-free category. A composition that replaces fishmeal with a different protein source — insect meal or a fermented microbial protein, for instance — would sit outside its specific microalgae-based claim scope.

The IPC composition shows every one of the 90 records touching A23K animal-feed claims, but fermentation and enzymatic synthesis routes (C12P, 18 records), protein and peptide-specific claims (A23J, 7 records) and genetically engineered feed microorganisms (C12N, 3 records) are comparatively under-claimed. That gap suggests an opening for claims built around a specific microbial production process or a peptide-level digestibility mechanism, rather than another broad feed-composition claim competing with the crowded A23K space. Anyone filing there should still check the strongest co-assignee clusters, since several are institutional research programmes already working adjacent to fermentation-based protein.

Receiving-office data in this dataset shows China with 15 filings, India with 14, the United States with 13, the WIPO PCT route with 13, Europe with 11 and Australia with 9 — a reasonably even spread rather than concentration in a single office. That pattern fits a feed-ingredient technology tied to regional aquaculture production and regulatory approval, where filers seek protection in multiple major aquaculture-producing and consuming markets rather than defaulting to one home jurisdiction. A filing strategy limited to just the US or just Europe would miss a meaningful share of where competitors are actually seeking protection.