Tandem Heterogeneous Catalysis Patents: Leaders & Filing Trends 2026
Filing growth compares 2021 (71 records) with 2024 (38) — 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 1,285 records in scope (CR5), not by the ranked leaders only.
What this landscape covers
This landscape maps 1,285 published records matching tandem catalysis, cascade catalysis and bifunctional catalyst language combined with heterogeneous catalytic process terms. The scope spans 2015 through mid-2026, capturing both the refining-driven filing wave that peaked in 2018 and the slower, more diffuse activity since. Records are drawn from filings at the United States, European, PCT, Canadian, Indian and Australian offices, so the picture reflects where applicants sought protection as much as where they invented.
Reading the data by patent family rather than raw document count matters here: refining and petrochemical majors file continuations and multi-jurisdiction counterparts aggressively, which inflates document totals without adding new inventive scope. The concentration figures below use the family-level assignee ranking for that reason.
Filing trends and technology composition
Two views of the same 1,285 records: how filing activity moved year over year, and which IPC subclasses carry the claim density.
Filing activity, 2017-2026
Filings rose to a peak of 119 in 2018, then eased; the tracked decline from 71 in 2021 to 38 in 2024 is a real 46% drop, but 2025 and 2026 figures will keep revising upward as later-filed applications publish.
Technology composition by IPC subclass
C10G (hydrocarbon oils and refining) and C07C (acyclic and carbocyclic compounds) each appear in over 42% of records, confirming this field is anchored in refining and base-chemical conversion rather than in battery or heterocyclic chemistry, where H01M and C07D sit under 20%.
Shares are the percentage of the 1,285 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
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Process for the dehydration and hydrogenation of substituted amino-aryl-butanol compounds by heterogeneous catalysis
Filed by Gruenenthal, this record describes a two-step heterogeneous catalytic sequence: dehydration of a substituted 4-dimethylamino-2-aryl-butan-2-ol compound to an intermediate, followed by hydrogenation to the target dimethyl-(3-aryl-butyl)-amine compound.It illustrates a common pattern in this dataset: cascade catalytic steps claimed together as a single process rather than as independent catalyst compositions.
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | US4961917A | Method for reduction of nitrogen oxides with ammonia using promoted zeolite catalysts | 768 |
| 2 | US5516497A | Staged metal-promoted zeolite catalysts and method for catalytic reduction of nitrogen oxides using the same | 473 |
| 3 | US20130084474A1 | Electrochemical hydrogen-catalyst power system | 218 |
| 4 | US20140072836A1 | H2o-based electrochemical hydrogen-catalyst power system | 206 |
| 5 | US7816570B2 | Process for conversion of biomass to fuel | 170 |
| 6 | US5024981A | Staged metal-promoted zeolite catalysts and method for catalytic reduction of nitrogen oxides using the same | 154 |
| 7 | US20090283442A1 | Production of Aviation Fuel from Renewable Feedstocks | 149 |
| 8 | WO2011116236A2 | Electrochemical hydrogen-catalyst power system | 143 |
| 9 | EP0582347A1 | Catalyst for the hydroisomerization of long-chain N-paraffins and process for preparing it | 143 |
| 10 | US20090294324A1 | Production of Blended Gasoline Aviation and Diesel Fuels from Renewable Feedstocks | 141 |
Citation counts favour older filings that have had more time to accumulate citations within the searched corpus; treat them as a signal of influence, not of current commercial relevance.
Each row carries its publication number; clicking a row searches Eureka by that number.
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The filing and citation data point to a field with occupied core claims and a long tail of narrower process patents built around them.
The core is claimed by a small group
Five assignees hold 39.9% of all 1,285 records in scope, and the ranked ten hold 53.6%. That concentration sits in refining and petrochemical conversion claims — hydroprocessing, hydrocracking and related catalytic reforming steps — rather than in newer cascade-catalyst chemistry.
Activity has cooled from its post-2018 peak
Filings fell from 71 in 2021 to 38 in 2024, a 46% decline. That follows a 2018 peak of 119, suggesting the initial wave of foundational refining-catalyst claims has largely been filed, with newer entrants now working around an established core.
Refining chemistry, not battery chemistry, anchors this field
C10G hydrocarbon-oil processing appears in 43.8% of records and C07C in 42.4%, while battery and fuel-cell related H01M appears in only 9.4%. Bifunctional and cascade catalyst claims here are overwhelmingly about hydrocarbon conversion, not electrochemical storage.
Influence skews toward older NOx-reduction chemistry
The most-cited records in this set concern zeolite-catalysed nitrogen oxide reduction, filed well before the tandem-catalysis search terms became common. Their citation counts reflect corpus age, not that emissions-catalyst chemistry is where current filing activity concentrates.
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to catalysis & reactor design — tandem heterogeneous catalysis patent landscape, with the prior art for and against each one.
Where to take this analysis
The dataset points to a mature refining-catalyst core with narrower, less-claimed branches around it. Deciding where to file next means testing specific claim language against that core rather than against the field as a whole.
Test a draft claim against the occupied core
Run a candidate claim through the same search logic used here to see whether it lands inside the dense C10G/C07C refining cluster or in one of the thinner branches identified above.
Explore claims in Patsnap EurekaTrack the leading filers' latest activity
Latest-year momentum figures are still incomplete; revisit assignee-level filing counts periodically as 2025-2026 publications continue to land.
Set up assignee tracking in Patsnap EurekaCommon questions on this landscape
The ranking is concentrated at the top: the leading assignee holds 297 of the 1,285 records in scope, well ahead of the fifth-place holder at 43 and the tenth-place holder at 31. The top five combined account for 39.9% of all records, and the top ten for 53.6%. The leaders are integrated oil and petrochemical companies rather than specialty catalyst makers, which reflects the field's roots in refining and hydroprocessing chemistry.
Filing peaked in 2018 at 119 records and has cooled since, with the tracked complete years showing a drop from 71 filings in 2021 to 38 in 2024, a 46% decline. Publication typically lags filing by around 18 months, so 2025 and 2026 counts are still incomplete and should not be read as a continued slide. The honest read is that the initial wave of foundational claims has largely been filed, and current activity is narrower in scope.
Hydrocarbon oil and refining processes (IPC class C10G) appear in 43.8% of the 1,285 records, and acyclic and carbocyclic compound chemistry (C07C) appears in 42.4%. General catalytic process claims (B01J) sit at 39.8%. Battery and fuel-cell related claims (H01M) are present in only 9.4% of records, so despite some high-profile electrochemical filings in the citation data, the bulk of activity is hydrocarbon conversion, not energy storage.
Based on the IPC composition, branches like lubricant base-stock upgrading (C10M, 7.9% of records), heterocyclic compound synthesis via cascade catalysis (C07D, 5.1%), and bifunctional catalyst regeneration cycles show materially thinner claim density than the core refining classes. These are not gaps in the sense of being unclaimed entirely, but they carry far fewer records relative to C10G and C07C, which suggests more room for a differentiated claim.
Fairly concentrated at the top and long-tailed below it. The top five assignees hold 39.9% of the 1,285 records in scope and the top ten hold 53.6%, out of a ranked list of 100 companies. Co-assignee filing is rare, with only 10 identified co-assignee pairs in the dataset, and the strongest pair links a major oil company with its own regional investment subsidiary rather than an external research partner.
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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.