Decontamination & Sterilization Patents: Top Companies, Trends 2026
Decontamination and Sterilization of Facilities: Where the Patents Sit
54.9% concentration. The top 5 of 78 ranked assignees hold 296 of 539 records in scope — filing here is dominated by a small set of sterilization equipment makers, not a fragmented field. Filings ran from 39 in 2017 to a peak of 50 in 2020, then declined to 14 by 2024, a -56% move over the 2021-2024 span. 2025 and 2026 counts sit lower still, but publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, so those final years are undercounted rather than genuinely quiet.
- 1STERIS CORP102
- 2REGENERON PHARMACEUTICALS INC61
- 3ASP GLOBAL MFG GMBH52
- 4ETHICON INC46
- 5AMERICAN STERILIZER CO35
See the full decontamination and sterilization of facilities 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 patents in facility decontamination and sterilization?
Among the 78 assignees in the ranked dataset, one company leads clearly with 102 of the 539 records in scope, roughly triple the count of the tenth-ranked assignee at 16. The top 5 assignees together account for 296 records, or 54.9% of the field, so filing activity is concentrated rather than spread evenly. That concentration is typical of sterilization equipment categories, where a small number of manufacturers have filed continuously since well before this dataset’s 2015 start.
Is patent filing in this space growing or shrinking?
Filing peaked in 2020 at 50 records and then declined, falling from 32 records in 2021 to 14 in 2024 — a -56% move over that three-year span. That is a genuine contraction rather than noise. However, 2025 and 2026 figures in the dataset should not be read as continued decline: publication typically lags filing by around 18 months, so the most recent one to two years are always undercounted at the time of any snapshot.
What technology areas dominate the patent claims?
A61L, the IPC subclass covering sterilising and disinfecting, appears in 70.7% of the 539 records in scope, making it by far the dominant classification. A61M (devices for body fluids) and G01N (material analysis and testing) follow at 14.7% and 9.1% respectively. Because a single record can carry multiple IPC classes, these percentages add up to more than 100%, and they should be read as claim density per branch rather than a strict market split.
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 Decontamination and Sterilization of Facilities 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.