Beverage Carbonation Patents: Who Leads, Where the Gaps Are 2026
- 72.2% of the field sits with five filers. The top five assignees combined account for 65 of the 90 records in scope — a concentrated core rather than a fragmented one.
- Filings grew 250% between 2021 and 2024. From 2 records in 2021 to 7 in 2024, with a peak year of 12 in 2023 — the clearest sign of active claim-staking in this dataset.
- Foods & beverages (A23L) touches 56.7% of records. But mixing (B01F), inorganic CO2 chemistry (C01B/C01F) and packaging (B65D) each carry a meaningful and separately claimable slice.
Filing growth compares 2021 (2 records) with 2024 (7) — 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 90 records in scope (CR5), not by the ranked leaders only.
What this landscape covers
Beverage carbonation and aseptic filling sit at the intersection of process engineering and food chemistry: how carbon dioxide is dissolved into a liquid, how a filler valve meters product into a container without introducing dissolved oxygen, and how caps and packaging hold their integrity once sealed. This dataset draws on 90 published records filed against a search string combining carbonation and aseptic filling terms with process-specific qualifiers such as filler valve, cap sterilization and dissolved oxygen. It spans filings from 2015 through the 2026-07-31 data cut-off.
Because publication typically lags filing by around 18 months, the most recent one to two years in any trend understate real filing activity — 2024 is the last year that can be read as broadly complete.
Filing trends and technology composition
Two views of the same 90 records: how filing activity has moved year over year, and which IPC subclasses carry the claim density.
A three-year filing surge, not a steady climb
Filings were negligible through 2017 and stayed low until 2021 (2 records), then rose to 7 by 2024 — a 250% increase — with a peak of 12 in 2023. Read 2025 and 2026 as incomplete rather than a slowdown.
Foods & beverages leads, but chemistry classes carry real weight
A23L (foods & non-alcoholic beverages) appears in 56.7% of the 90 records, well ahead of B01F mixing & stirring (25.6%) and the inorganic CO2-chemistry classes C01B and C01F (23.3% and 21.1%). Packaging class B65D, at 12.2%, is the smallest of the eight tracked classes but is where container and cap-integrity claims concentrate.
Shares are the percentage of the 90 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
Go deeper on Beverage Carbonation and Aseptic Filling with Eureka
This page is one run against one query. Ask Eureka your own question about beverage carbonation and aseptic filling and every answer comes back with the patent numbers behind it.
Try EurekaThe most-cited patents in this space
US4025655A — Beverage carbonation devices
Beverage carbonation devices employing carbon dioxide-containing molecular sieves. Upon contact with aqueous solutions carbon dioxide is released from such molecular sieves and thereupon dissolves in the liquid to provide a carbonated beverage.Filed by The Procter & Gamble Company; still one of the most-cited records in this dataset decades after grant.
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | US4850269A | Low pressure, high efficiency carbonator and method | 202 |
| 2 | US4025655A | Beverage carbonation devices | 143 |
| 3 | US3888998A | Beverage carbonation | 116 |
| 4 | US6463964B2 | Method of operating a machine for filling bottles, cans or the like beverage containers with a beverage, and … | 72 |
| 5 | US4007134A | Beverage carbonation device | 68 |
| 6 | WO2016037668A1 | Method and device for the reversible adsorption of carbon dioxide | 66 |
| 7 | US20020073652A1 | Bottling plant and method of operating a bottling plant and a bottling plant with sections for stabilizing th… | 62 |
| 8 | US4110255A | Beverage carbonation device | 54 |
| 9 | US4147808A | Beverage carbonation device and process | 44 |
| 10 | EP0296570A1 | Low pressure, high efficiency carbonator and method | 41 |
Citation counts favour older filings simply because they have had longer to accumulate citations inside this corpus — treat them as a signal of influence on later filers, not of current commercial relevance.
Each row carries its publication number; clicking a row searches Eureka by that number.
Put your own technology through the same analysis
Eureka on the web
When you want the answer in the next five minutes.
The agent works the prompt against patents and technical literature, citing every source.
Run your analysis now →MCP server & REST API
When it has to run inside your own pipeline.
Patent search, landscape analysis and assignee resolution as MCP tools. Drop them into any agent framework, or call REST directly.
Browse MCP servers →What the concentration and citation pattern imply
Three findings shape how a new entrant should scope freedom-to-operate work in this field.
The core is narrow, the tail is long
Five assignees account for 65 of the 90 records in scope, rising to 93.3% (84 records) across ten. The remaining filers each hold a small handful of records, which means most freedom-to-operate risk is concentrated in a short list of parties rather than spread thinly.
Filing activity is recent, not legacy
The oldest cited patents in this field date to the 1970s and 1980s, but the filing count itself has grown sharply since 2021, peaking at 12 records in 2023. That gap between old foundational patents and new filing activity suggests parties are re-claiming around older carbonator and filler mechanics rather than starting from a blank slate.
Chemistry classes carry independent weight
A23L dominates by record count, but C01B, C01F and C07C — inorganic and organic compound classes tied to CO2 dissolution chemistry — each cover roughly a fifth of records independently. A claim search limited to A23L alone would miss a substantial share of the relevant prior art.
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to beverage carbonation and aseptic filling, with the prior art for and against each one.
Who is filing, and where the gaps sit
The ranked assignee list returned by this dataset covers 29 companies, led by a filer with 20 records; fifth place holds 6 and tenth place holds 2 — a sharp drop-off past the leading group.
One filer sets the pace
The leading assignee's 20 records are more than three times the fifth-place count of 6, establishing a clear ceiling for how much of this space any single competitor controls outright.
A tight second tier
Positions two through five cluster together before the count drops again by tenth place, which sits at just 2 records — evidence of a genuine long tail beyond the leading names.
Co-filing is limited and concentrated
Only 6 co-assignee pairs appear across the dataset, and the strongest single pairing accounts for 6 shared records — most filers in this field are prosecuting independently rather than jointly.
| Assignee | Recent year | YoY |
|---|---|---|
| Cargill, Inc. | 0 | — |
| Innovator Energy LLC | 0 | — |
| The Procter & Gamble Company | 0 | — |
| GOULSON MELANIE JEAN | 0 | — |
| Skytree B.V. | 0 | — |
| OSBORN GREGORY SCOTT | 0 | — |
| LAVAQUE OSCAR | 0 | — |
| KHS GmbH | 0 | — |
Where to take this analysis
The dataset points to a narrow leading group, a recent filing surge, and chemistry classes that sit outside the obvious foods-and-beverages heading. Turning that into a filing or freedom-to-operate decision means going deeper on specific claims.
Map claims against the leading filers
Pull the granted claims of the top five assignees' most recent records to see exactly which carbonation or filling mechanics are actively being re-claimed.
Explore assignee claims in EurekaTest a draft claim against prior art
Before drafting around dissolved-oxygen control or cap sterilization, check how close existing claims already sit to that language.
Run a claim check in EurekaWatch the under-claimed branches
Line-efficiency sensing and package integrity testing show thinner coverage than the core carbonation classes — worth monitoring for new entrants.
Set up monitoring in EurekaCommon questions about this patent landscape
The dataset behind this landscape ranks 29 companies, with the leading filer holding 20 of the 90 records in scope. The top five filers combined hold 65 records, or 72.2% of everything in scope, which means a small group of companies controls most of the documented claim space. Beyond tenth place, filing counts drop to single or low-double digits, so freedom-to-operate work should prioritise the leading names first.
Yes, based on complete years: filings rose from 2 records in 2021 to 7 in 2024, a 250% increase, with a peak of 12 records in 2023. Because publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, 2025 and 2026 figures in any dataset are still filling in and should not be read as a slowdown. The trend through the last complete year points to active, not declining, interest.
US4025655A, assigned to The Procter & Gamble Company, covers beverage carbonation devices that use carbon dioxide-containing molecular sieves which release CO2 on contact with an aqueous solution. It is one of the most-cited records in this dataset, which signals that later carbonator-mechanism filings have had to design around or cite it. Anyone filing a claim built on solid-media CO2 release for carbonation should review its claim scope specifically, rather than assuming a general carbonation patent covers different mechanics.
Relative to the core carbonation and mixing classes, areas such as cap sterilization validation, line-efficiency sensing for filler valves, and post-fill package integrity testing show thinner record density in this dataset. Dissolved-oxygen control specifically within aseptic lines, and catalytic approaches to CO2 dissolution that overlap with class B01J, are also comparatively lightly claimed. These are reasonable starting points for a novelty search rather than guaranteed white space, since absence from this dataset does not mean absence of prior art elsewhere.
Each patent record can be classified under more than one IPC subclass, so the same record is counted once in every relevant class. In this dataset, A23L covers 56.7% of the 90 records on its own, and B01F, C01B and other classes add their own separate percentages on top rather than being mutually exclusive slices of a single total. This is standard for IPC-based composition charts and is why the shares should be read individually, not summed.
Research Beverage Carbonation and Aseptic Filling in depth with Eureka
Go past this page: query the whole beverage carbonation and aseptic filling corpus yourself, in your own scope.
Every answer comes back with patent numbers you can open.
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.