Constructed Wetland Quality Control Patents: Leaders & Gaps 2026
- Filing peaked in 2021 at 11 families, then eased toward the 2022 midpoint of 7 — a flat-to-declining trend rather than an accelerating one.
- China accounts for 39 of 62 receiving-office filings, versus 12 from the United States, making Chinese examiners and prior art the primary gate to clear.
- C02F water-treatment claims dominate at 40 records, while sensing (G01N, 11) and separation (B01D, 10; B03B, 8) sit well behind — control-layer integration is comparatively thin.
What this patent set actually covers
Constructed wetland quality control sits at the intersection of civil wastewater engineering and monitoring instrumentation: systems that route effluent through engineered wetland cells while measuring and adjusting parameters such as chemical oxygen demand, total nitrogen and flow. The 62 patent families captured here span 2015 to mid-2026, with the majority filed at the China National Intellectual Property Administration. Publication typically lags filing by around 18 months, so the 2025-2026 count understates real filing activity.
The dataset skews heavily toward the treatment apparatus itself — carbon-source dosing, flow control, pipe and pool configuration — rather than toward the sensing or data layer that would let such a system be called "smart." That imbalance shapes where a new entrant can still stake a defensible claim.
Filing trend and technology composition
Two views of the same 62 families: how filing activity has moved year over year, and which IPC subclasses carry the claim weight.
A peak in 2021, then a plateau
Filings rose from zero in 2017 to a peak of 11 in 2021, then settled near the 2022 midpoint of 7. That pattern reads as a field that had a filing wave rather than sustained, compounding growth — useful context before assuming the space is still heating up.
Treatment hardware outweighs sensing and controls
C02F (water and wastewater treatment) accounts for 40 of the tagged records, more than the next three subclasses combined. G01N (material analysis and testing, 11), B01D (separation processes, 10) and B03B (wet separation of solids, 8) show that instrumentation and pre-treatment are present but secondary. Small counts in G06Q, A01K, B63B and E02B mark adjacent applications — data/business logic, aquaculture, marine platforms and hydraulic works — that have barely been claimed against this specific problem.
Shares are the percentage of the 62 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
Go deeper on Constructed Wetland Quality Control with Eureka
This page is one run against one query. Ask Eureka your own question about constructed wetland quality control and every answer comes back with the patent numbers behind it.
Try EurekaA representative filing and the citation leaders
System and method for controlling amount of liquid carbon source released to constructed wetland (US20230339793A1)
The system doses a liquid carbon source into a constructed wetland based on closed-loop feedback: inlet and outlet sensors track flow, chemical oxygen demand (COD) and total nitrogen (TN), and a programmable logic controller adjusts a peristaltic pump accordingly. It ties carbon dosing directly to measured influent and effluent water quality rather than a fixed schedule.Filed by Ocean University of China; published 2023-10-26.
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | US20050120970A1 | Scalable fish rearing raceway system | 83 |
| 2 | US20110017678A1 | Process for Rain Water, HVAC Condensate and Refrigeration Blowdown/Bleed Blowdown/Bleed Water Recovery, Water… | 36 |
| 3 | US6932025B2 | Scalable fish rearing raceway system | 30 |
| 4 | US9453795B1 | Method and related systems for mapping high ranges of total phosphate content in water using measurements of … | 20 |
| 5 | US20060091046A1 | Recycled irrigation water treatment system including reverse osmosis | 18 |
| 6 | US9011689B1 | Artificial recharge system | 13 |
| 7 | CN102092855A | 循环强化脱氮双进水人工湿地装置 | 11 |
| 8 | CN113461256A | 一种针对雨水资源、封闭水体水质净化的系统及方法 | 9 |
| 9 | US7572378B2 | Recycled irrigation water treatment system including reverse osmosis | 9 |
| 10 | CN111977808A | 一种强化型生物-生态模块化污水处理系统 | 8 |
Citation counts accumulate over time and favour older filings; treat them as a measure of influence within this searched corpus, not as a signal of current commercial importance.
Patent titles are shown in the language they were filed in, not translated, so that each record stays verifiable against the original filing — a translated title will not match in Eureka or in any national register. Each row carries its publication number; clicking a row searches Eureka by that number.
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Three read-throughs from the trend, geography and citation data that matter more than the raw counts on their own.
The wave has already crested
Filings climbed from zero in 2017 to 11 in 2021 and have not exceeded that since, with 2022 sitting at 7. A new entrant is not racing an accelerating field; it is deciding whether to compete for claim space that has already been staked out once.
China is the primary examination gate
With 39 of 62 receiving-office filings in China against 12 in the United States and small single-digit counts elsewhere, prior art clearance and freedom-to-operate work should start with CNIPA records before extending to PCT, US or UK filings.
Sensing is under-claimed relative to treatment
C02F treatment-hardware claims outnumber G01N sensing and testing claims by roughly four to one. Combined with only 3 G06Q records, the data-processing and analytics layer sitting on top of wetland sensors looks distinctly thinner than the physical treatment apparatus.
Older raceway and recovery patents anchor the field
The most-cited records date back to fish-rearing raceway and water-recovery filings rather than recent wetland-specific control systems, a reminder that citation leadership in a searched corpus reflects age and breadth of applicability more than present-day relevance.
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to constructed wetland quality control, with the prior art for and against each one.
Who is filing, and where the crowd thins out
Co-assignee pairs and single-inventor filings suggest a fragmented field: a handful of individuals and Chinese research institutes with small, repeated filing pairs, rather than a small number of large corporate portfolios.
Individual inventor pairs lead co-filing
The strongest co-assignee links are individual-to-individual pairings such as Douglas Morrison with Vernon Kent Drylie, filed jointly five times, rather than corporate-to-corporate alliances. Institutional co-filing, such as Wanxi University with Anhui Guonong Data Technology, appears at smaller scale.
No assignee is currently active
Every assignee named in the recent-momentum tracking, including the leading individual filers and Nanjing Institute of Environmental Sciences, shows zero filings in the latest year. That is consistent with the 2021 peak having passed rather than any single player pulling ahead now.
A long tail of single-filing entrants
With 62 families spread across many distinct Chinese engineering firms, design institutes and universities, plus individual inventors, no single organisation appears to hold a dominant share of the corpus. That structure favours a new entrant willing to search assignee-by-assignee rather than assume one incumbent to watch.
| Assignee | Recent year | YoY |
|---|---|---|
| MORRISON DOUGLAS | 0 | — |
| DRYLIE VERNON KENT | 0 | — |
| DOUGLAS MORRISON | 0 | — |
| Nanjing Institute of Environmental Sciences, Ministry of Environmental Protection | 0 | — |
| VERNON KENT DRYLIE | 0 | — |
| West Anhui University | 0 | — |
| Wuhan Changbao Environmental Protection Engineering Co., Ltd. | 0 | — |
| Shandong Academy of Environmental Sciences Co., Ltd. | 0 | — |
Where to take this next
The trend and assignee data point to specific next steps rather than a general conclusion.
Check freedom-to-operate against China-first filings
With 39 of 62 families routed through China, a clearance search that starts and ends with US or EPO databases will miss most of the relevant prior art.
Run a China-focused searchTest claims in the sensing-to-control gap
The four-to-one split between C02F treatment claims and G01N sensing claims suggests real-time monitoring tied to automated dosing is less thoroughly claimed than the treatment hardware itself.
Explore the sensing gapMap the individual-inventor cluster
Repeated co-filing between the same named individuals suggests a small, identifiable group worth tracking directly rather than through corporate assignee search alone.
Trace inventor networksCommon questions on constructed wetland quality control patents
This dataset identifies 62 patent families published between 2015 and mid-2026 that combine constructed or engineered wetland treatment with effluent or water quality monitoring and control. Filing activity peaked at 11 families in 2021 and has since settled to a lower, flatter level. Because publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, the 2025-2026 figures will rise somewhat as more applications publish.
China is the dominant receiving office, accounting for 39 of the 62 families in this corpus, compared with 12 in the United States and small single or low-double-digit counts in WIPO PCT filings, Canada, Chile and the United Kingdom. This concentration means most relevant prior art, and most active examination risk, sits in Chinese-language filings from research institutes, design institutes and regional engineering firms. Any freedom-to-operate review for this space should treat CNIPA records as the primary search target, not a supplementary one.
Not on the current trend. Filings rose from zero in 2017 to a peak of 11 in 2021, then eased to 7 by the 2022 midpoint, indicating a flat-to-declining pattern rather than sustained growth. Recent-year momentum tracking for the leading named assignees also shows zero filings in the latest tracked year across the board. That combination suggests the initial filing wave has largely passed, though the field remains open to new entrants given how fragmented ownership is.
The corpus is weighted heavily toward core water-treatment apparatus, with 40 of 62 records classified under IPC subclass C02F, while sensing and testing (G01N, 11 records), separation processes (B01D, 10) and solids handling (B03B, 8) trail well behind. Data-processing and business-logic applications (G06Q) appear in only 3 records, and aquaculture, marine and hydraulic-engineering crossovers (A01K, B63B, E02B) each appear just twice. That pattern points to the sensing-to-control integration layer, and adjacent applications like aquaculture-integrated wetlands or marine greywater modules, as areas with comparatively thin claim coverage.
Ownership in this corpus is fragmented rather than concentrated in a few large corporations. The strongest filing relationships are between named individual inventors, such as Douglas Morrison and Vernon Kent Drylie who co-filed five times, alongside a wide spread of Chinese universities, environmental science institutes and regional engineering firms each holding a small number of families. No single assignee shows filing activity in the most recent tracked year, which is consistent with a field past its initial filing peak and open to new claimants.
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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.
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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.