Bacteriophage Therapy Patents: Who Leads, Where the Gaps Are 2026
Bacteriophage therapy and manufacturing patents: mapping who holds the claims
51.4% of all filings sit with five assignees. 260 of 506 records in scope belong to the top five, so most of the remaining ranked companies hold only a handful of families each. Publications ran at 38 in 2017, the peak so far. The three-year window from 2021 (33) to 2024 (23) shows a -30% change — the most recent complete comparison the data supports. Years after 2024 are still filling in under the ~18-month publication lag and should not be read as a continued decline.
- 1TECHNOPHAGE INVESTIGACAO E DESENVOLVIMENTO EM BIOTECHNOLOGIA SA88
- 2TECNIFAR IND TECNICA FARM48
- 3PHERECYDES PHARMA46
- 4ERYTECH PHARMA46
- 5THE ROCKEFELLER UNIV32
See the full bacteriophage therapy and manufacturing analysis in Eureka
- The complete ranking, not just the top five
- Every IPC branch with its share of the corpus
- The most-cited records, and where claim space is still thin
Common questions on this landscape
Who holds the most bacteriophage therapy patents?
The dataset shows a clear leader-and-long-tail structure: the top assignee alone holds 88 of the 506 records in scope, more than double the fifth-place company’s 32. The top five assignees combined account for 51.4% of all records, and the top ten reach 68.0%. Below the tenth-ranked company (12 records), the ranking thins into many organisations holding only a handful of families each, so a freedom-to-operate check should focus first on the leading names before broadening out.
Is bacteriophage therapy patent filing growing or shrinking?
Filing peaked in 2017 at 38 published records and has since cooled, with the last fully comparable window showing a -30% change from 33 records in 2021 to 23 in 2024. Because publication lags actual filing by roughly 18 months, the 2025 and 2026 figures in any pull will look artificially low and should not be read as an accelerating decline. The honest read is a field that has settled into a smaller but still active filing pace after its mid-2010s peak.
What technology areas dominate bacteriophage patent claims?
Medicinal preparations (A61K) and microorganisms/genetic engineering (C12N) are each present on roughly two-thirds of the 506 records, making them the two dominant claim areas by a wide margin. Therapeutic activity claims (A61P) and peptide/protein claims (C07K) follow at around a quarter of records each. Fermentation and enzymatic synthesis (C12P), the class most tied to industrial-scale propagation, appears on just 5.9% of records, marking it as the thinnest-claimed major technology area in the set.
Disclaimer. This analysis is based on Patsnap Eureka data drawn from a limited snapshot of global patent records and is provided for general information and reference only. Patent data carries inherent limitations — recent filings are under-counted because of publication lag, counts may be on a record or family basis, classification and applicant-name data may contain errors or duplicates, and the underlying search query defines the scope shown — so the analysis may be incomplete or inaccurate and may not reflect the full technology landscape.
Nothing here is an exhaustive prior-art, novelty, freedom-to-operate or validity search, nor does it constitute legal, financial or professional advice, and it should not be relied upon as such. Verify independently and review with qualified patent and legal professionals before acting on it.
Method: Filing trend and technology composition. Derived from a Patsnap search on Bacteriophage Therapy and Manufacturing covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-07-31. Counts reflect published records only and shift as new filings publish. Every share divides by all records in scope. Data: Patsnap Eureka. See the full landscape report.