Aquaculture Technology Patents: Leaders, Trends & White Space 2026
- 904 patent families span recirculating aquaculture systems, water treatment and automated feeding, with filings concentrated in China (437 records) well ahead of the United States (114).
- Filing has plateaued, peaking at 90 in 2023 after climbing from 35 in 2017 — growth has gone flat rather than continuing to accelerate.
- The most-cited patents are two decades old, including US5961831A and US6171480B1, meaning the technical baseline for closed recirculating filtration was set well before the current filing wave.
Filing growth compares 2021 (82 records) with 2024 (75) — a three-year span. 2024 is the most recent year we treat as complete: publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, so 2025 onwards are still filling in and any growth rate that ends there would understate the field. Top-5 share is the combined record count of the five largest assignees divided by all 904 records in scope (CR5), not by the ranked leaders only.
What this landscape covers
This dataset tracks 904 patent families filed between 2015 and mid-2026 that describe recirculating aquaculture systems, water quality control, automated feeding and biofloc management, drawn from filings classified under animal husbandry and fishing (A01K), water and wastewater treatment (C02F), and separation processes (B01D). The core technical claims sit overwhelmingly in A01K, present in 849 of the 904 records, with water treatment (C02F, 385 records) as the dominant secondary discipline — reflecting that most aquaculture patents are filed as system claims that bundle a tank or enclosure design together with a water treatment or filtration sub-claim.
Smaller but present cross-filings into business/data processing (G06Q, 33 records), material analysis (G01N, 31) and mixing equipment (B01F, 25) point to management-software and sensing layers being claimed alongside the physical hardware, though these remain a minority of the corpus. Because publication typically lags filing by around 18 months, the 2026 figure in the trend below is necessarily incomplete and should not be read as a real decline yet.
Filing trends and technology composition
Annual filing counts and IPC subclass distribution for the 904 families in this landscape, drawn from publications between 2015 and the 2026 data cut-off.
Filings rose, then flattened
Annual filings grew from 35 in 2017 to a peak of 90 in 2023, with 2022 sitting at 86 — a midpoint that shows the growth curve had already levelled off before the peak year, rather than continuing upward. The partial 2026 count of 28 is an undercount typical of publication lag, not evidence of a sudden drop.
A01K and C02F dominate the claim space
Animal husbandry and fishing (A01K) appears in 849 of 904 records, confirming that nearly every filing in this corpus is anchored in a farming-system claim. Water treatment (C02F, 385) is the most common secondary discipline, followed by separation processes (B01D, 69) and horticulture/forestry (A01G, 56) — the latter likely reflecting aquaponics crossover claims.
Shares are the percentage of the 904 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
Go deeper on Aquaculture Technology Landscape with Eureka
This page is one run against one query. Ask Eureka your own question about aquaculture technology landscape and every answer comes back with the patent numbers behind it.
Try EurekaThe patents shaping this field
Recirculating aquaculture system using biofloc fermenter and aquaponics (US20220312747A1)
Filed by Republic of Korea's National Fisheries Research and Development Institute, this application combines a breeding water tank, a drum filter, an automatic filtration system and a biofloc fermentation system that supplies oxygen to backwash water, with the purified, oxygen-enriched water then routed to a plant cultivation system.Dated 2022-10-06 — illustrative of the aquaponics-biofloc integration pattern now appearing across several recent filings.
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | US10219491B2 | Dissolved oxygen control system for aquaculture | 250 |
| 2 | US5961831A | Automated closed recirculating aquaculture filtration system and method | 195 |
| 3 | US6447681B1 | Aquaculture wastewater treatment system and method of making same | 166 |
| 4 | US6171480B1 | Automated closed recirculating aquaculture filtration system | 145 |
| 5 | US6443097B1 | Recirculating marine aquaculture process | 102 |
| 6 | US20170150701A1 | Recirculating Aquaculture System and Treatment Method for Aquatic Species | 88 |
| 7 | WO1997049279A1 | Automated closed recirculating aquaculture filtration system | 73 |
| 8 | US20030070624A1 | Process for culturing crabs in recirculating marine aquaculture systems | 65 |
| 9 | US5038715A | Aquaculture system | 59 |
| 10 | US20090314711A1 | PHOTOELECTROCATALYTIC OXIDIZER DEVICE HAVING COMPOSITE NANOPOROUS TiO2 COATED Ti PHOTOANODE AND METHOD OF REM… | 55 |
Citation counts are drawn from within the searched corpus and favour older filings; treat them as a measure of technical influence, not current commercial relevance.
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Reading the filing trend, geography and citation pattern together points to a field with an established technical baseline and a filing centre of gravity that has shifted decisively toward China.
China now leads filing volume by a wide margin
China accounts for 437 records against 114 for the United States, 65 for India, 60 for the EPO, 58 for WIPO/PCT and 50 for South Korea. A landscape once anchored in US recirculating-system patents from the 1990s and 2000s has become a China-centred filing base over the past decade.
Growth has flattened rather than continued climbing
Annual filings rose from 35 in 2017 to a peak of 90 in 2023, with the 2022 midpoint of 86 already close to that peak — the curve bent before it topped out. Several previously active assignees show zero filings in the latest year, consistent with a maturing rather than accelerating field.
The most-cited patents predate the current filing wave
US10219491B2, US5961831A, US6447681B1, US6171480B1 and US6443097B1 collectively hold the highest citation counts in the corpus, with several originating from closed recirculating filtration work filed well before 2015. Newer filings build on this baseline rather than displacing it.
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to aquaculture technology landscape, with the prior art for and against each one.
Who is filing, and where the field is open
Assignee activity is fragmented outside a small set of repeat filers, with several established names showing no filings in the most recent year — a pattern more consistent with consolidation than retreat, given publication lag.
A long tail behind a thin set of repeat filers
The assignee ranking spans 904 families with co-assignee pairings appearing only 10 times in total, the strongest being a two-person pairing filed together nine times. This signals that most applicants in this field file independently rather than through joint ventures.
Several established filers have gone quiet
Assignees including Atlantic Sapphire IP LLC and multiple Chinese and Korean-linked entities show zero filings in the latest tracked year. Given normal publication lag, this may reflect pending unpublished applications rather than an actual stop in R&D activity.
Joint filings cluster around a handful of individual inventors
The strongest co-assignee relationship in the dataset pairs two individual filers across nine records, with a second pairing at eight. An institution-industry pairing also appears at seven joint filings, suggesting occasional university-to-startup technology transfer.
| Assignee | Recent year | YoY |
|---|---|---|
| University of Maryland Biotechnology Institute | 0 | — |
| Pentair Pool and Spa | 0 | — |
| ATLANTIC SAPPHIRE IP LLC | 0 | — |
| Royal Shrimp LLC | 0 | — |
| TD Holt Holdings Ltd. | 0 | — |
| GRAINTEC AS | 0 | — |
| Yissum Research Development Company of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem | 0 | — |
| University of Maryland, Baltimore County | 0 | — |
Where to take this analysis
The trend and assignee data point to specific next steps depending on whether the goal is freedom-to-operate, licensing or R&D scoping.
Check freedom-to-operate against the top-cited patents
The five most-cited records in this corpus, several dating to the late 1990s and early 2000s, define the technical baseline for closed recirculating filtration. Any new filing in that space should be checked against their claim scope before drafting.
Explore prior art in EurekaTrack the under-claimed sub-areas
Sensor-driven feeding, water-quality analytics and biofloc-aquaponics integration show real filing activity but sit behind the dominant A01K/C02F claim base, leaving room for narrower claims to be staked out.
Map white space in EurekaWatch for a filing rebound once 2025-2026 data settles
The apparent flattening after 2023 is partly a publication-lag artefact. Re-running this analysis in a year will clarify whether the field is genuinely plateauing or simply under-reported for its most recent filings.
Set up monitoring in EurekaCommon questions about aquaculture patents
The most-cited patents in this corpus are US10219491B2 for dissolved oxygen control, and a cluster of older filings including US5961831A, US6171480B1 and US6447681B1 covering automated closed recirculating filtration and wastewater treatment. These date largely from the late 1990s through the early 2010s and continue to be cited by newer filings, which means they define the technical baseline that current applicants are building on rather than replacing. Anyone drafting a new claim in closed-loop filtration should review these first, since their citation counts indicate broad prior-art reach within the field.
Filing volume grew from 35 records in 2017 to a peak of 90 in 2023, but the 2022 figure of 86 was already close to that peak, indicating the growth curve had flattened before it topped out rather than continuing to accelerate. The partial 2026 count of 28 looks like a decline but is mostly a publication-lag artefact, since patent applications typically take around 18 months to publish. The honest read is that filing activity has plateaued at a high level rather than either accelerating or genuinely collapsing.
China leads by a wide margin with 437 of the 904 records in this dataset, more than triple the United States at 114. India, the EPO and WIPO/PCT each sit in the 58-65 range, and South Korea follows at 50. This distribution shows the centre of gravity for aquaculture patent filing has shifted decisively toward China over the period covered, even though some of the most-cited foundational patents originated in the United States.
Filings in this corpus are anchored overwhelmingly in animal husbandry and fishing systems (A01K, present in 849 of 904 records), typically bundled with water and wastewater treatment claims (C02F, 385 records). Secondary technology appears in separation processes such as filtration (B01D, 69), horticulture crossover for aquaponics (A01G, 56), and smaller amounts of business-process software (G06Q, 33), animal feed composition (A23K, 31) and material testing (G01N, 31). This composition confirms that most aquaculture patents are hardware system claims rather than pure software or data-analytics filings.
This filing from Republic of Korea's National Fisheries Research and Development institute combines a breeding water tank, drum filtration, an automatic filtration system, a biofloc fermenter that oxygenates backwash water, and a downstream plant cultivation system into a single integrated claim. For a company designing a biofloc-to-aquaponics water reuse loop, the specific combination of oxygenating backwash water before routing it to plant cultivation is the element most likely to require a design-around, such as treating or oxygenating water via a separate pathway rather than through the backwash stream. It does not block conventional recirculating systems that lack the biofloc-to-aquaponics water transfer step.
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Disclaimer. This page is generated from Patsnap Eureka data drawn from a limited snapshot of global patent and scientific-literature records, and is provided for general information and reference only.
Patent data carries inherent limitations: recent filings (typically the most recent 18–24 months) are under-counted due to standard publication lag; counts may be reported at either a patent-family or a patent-record basis and are not always directly comparable; classification, applicant-name, and citation data may contain errors, duplicates, or omissions; and the underlying search query defines and constrains the scope shown. As a result, the analysis may be incomplete or inaccurate and may not reflect the full technology landscape.
Nothing on this page constitutes an exhaustive prior-art, novelty, freedom-to-operate, or validity search, nor does it constitute legal, financial, investment, or professional advice, and it should not be relied upon as such. Any patent, commercial, or strategic decision should be verified independently and reviewed with qualified patent, legal, and domain professionals. Patsnap makes no warranties, express or implied, as to the accuracy, completeness, or fitness for any particular purpose of the information presented.
Machine translation. Assignee and organisation names originally recorded in Chinese, Japanese or Korean have been rendered into English by an AI translation step so that the tables stay readable. These renderings are best-effort and may not match a company’s registered English name; the original name is what the underlying patent record carries, and it is what any Eureka query launched from this page uses.