Ballast Water Treatment Patents: Who Leads, Where the Gaps Are 2026
Ballast Water Treatment Commissioning and Approval Patents
75.5% concentration. The top 5 of 25 ranked assignees hold 71 of the 94 records in scope — filing here is dominated by a small group, not fragmented across many small filers. Filing peaked at 25 records in 2017 and has declined since; the documented three-year span from 2021 (5 records) to 2024 (0 records) shows a -100% swing. Treat 2025 and 2026 as incomplete rather than as confirmation the field has gone quiet.
- 1EVOQUA WATER TECHNOLOGIES LLC35
- 2EVOQUA WATER TECH GMBH12
- 3EVOQUA WATER TECHNOLOGIES LTD10
- 4BALLAST WATER MONITORING7
- 5RWO7
See the full ballast water treatment commissioning and approval 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 ballast water treatment commissioning patents?
One assignee leads the ranked field with 35 of the 94 records in scope, well ahead of the fifth-placed assignee’s 7 records. The top five assignees combined hold 71 records, or 75.5% of everything in scope, which means the field is concentrated rather than fragmented. A new filer should assume any core disinfection or dosing mechanism has already been claimed by one of these five before drafting a similar application.
Is ballast water treatment patent filing still growing?
No — filing peaked in 2017 at 25 records and has declined since, with a documented -100% swing from 5 records in 2021 to 0 in 2024. However, publication typically lags actual filing by around 18 months, so 2025 and 2026 figures in this dataset are still incomplete and should not be read as confirmation the technology area is dead. The safer conclusion is that the core mechanisms are heavily claimed and remaining activity is consolidating around fewer players rather than expanding into new ground.
What technology areas dominate ballast water treatment patents?
Water and wastewater treatment (IPC class C02F) appears in 77.7% of the 94 records, and ship auxiliaries (B63J) appears in 43.6%, meaning most filings combine a treatment mechanism with shipboard integration claims. Electrolytic production covering electrochlorination (C25B) sits at 19.1%, and filtration-related claims (B01D) sit lower at 8.5%. Because a record can carry multiple IPC classes, these percentages should be read individually against the 94-record total, not summed.
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 Ballast Water Treatment Commissioning and Approval 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.