UV LED Disinfection Patents: Leaders, Trends & White Space 2026
Filing growth compares 2021 (45 records) with 2024 (16) — 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 389 records in scope (CR5), not by the ranked leaders only.
What this landscape covers
This landscape maps 389 published records tagged to UV LED disinfection methods and apparatus within water and wastewater treatment, drawn from filings and applicant text matching UV, LED and disinfection terms alongside the C02F water-treatment classification. It spans filings visible from 2015 through the 2026-07-31 data cut-off, giving a picture of who has built a claim position around UV-LED as an alternative to mercury-lamp and chemical disinfection in drinking water and related fluid systems.
Because publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, the most recent one to two years in any chart will always look thinner than they eventually turn out to be. The trend and concentration figures below should be read with that lag in mind, especially past 2024.
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Filing trend and technology composition
Two views of the same 389-record dataset: how filing activity has moved year over year, and which IPC subclasses carry the claim weight.
A filing wave that crested in 2021
Annual filings rose from 37 in 2017 to a peak of 45 in 2021, then declined to 16 by 2024 — a 64% fall over that three-year window. 2025 and 2026 figures are still filling in due to publication lag and should not yet be read as continued decline.
Disinfection claims layered onto water-treatment systems
C02F covers all but a handful of records (99.2%), confirming the search scope, while A61L sterilising and disinfecting classes sit on 42.7% of records — the clearest signal of where the actual UV-LED disinfection mechanism claims live. Smaller shares in B01D separation (8.5%), B01J catalytic/chemical processes (8.0%) and niche applications such as B63J ship auxiliaries (2.6%) mark adjacent, thinner-filed branches.
Shares are the percentage of the 389 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
Go deeper on Drinking-Water Treatment: UV LED Disinfection Patent Landscape with Eureka
This page is one run against one query. Ask Eureka your own question about drinking-water treatment: uv led disinfection patent landscape and every answer comes back with the patent numbers behind it.
Try EurekaRepresentative and most-cited filings
In-line UV-LED fluid disinfection unit and a method (WaterSprint AB, 2026-05-28)
The filing describes an in-line UV-LED disinfection unit built around a housing with a hollow structure that splits an internal cavity into inner and outer chambers, a UV-LED unit, and a sleeve fitted in the outer chamber with separation means dividing it further. The structure is aimed at controlling flow and light exposure geometry around the LED source rather than relying on a single open chamber design.Abstract text is machine-extracted from the published filing and lightly trimmed for length.
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | US20030108460A1 | Method for surface corona/ozone making, devices utilizing the same and methods for corona and ozone applicati… | 115 |
| 2 | US20150314024A1 | Method and apparatus for liquid disinfection by light emitted from light emitting diodes | 96 |
| 3 | US20140048494A1 | Apparatus and method of creating a concentrated supersaturated gaseous solution having ionization potential | 81 |
| 4 | US20150209457A1 | Systems and methods for disinfection | 80 |
| 5 | US20130146783A1 | Inline UV LED water disinfection and heating | 65 |
| 6 | WO2014115146A1 | Method and apparatus for liquid disinfection by light emitted from light emitting diodes | 53 |
| 7 | WO2018013581A1 | Point of care ultraviolet disinfection system | 30 |
| 8 | US20190142986A1 | Flowing fluid disinfectors and submersible UV light devices | 27 |
| 9 | KR100927445B1 | Unit for creating sterilized water, cartridge therefor and disinfection washing machine with the same | 27 |
| 10 | US20160355412A1 | Ultraviolet disinfection system | 23 |
Citation counts reflect influence within the searched corpus and skew toward older records; treat them as a signal of prior-art weight, not current commercial relevance.
Each row carries its publication number; clicking a row searches Eureka by that number.
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Three patterns stand out once the record counts, IPC shares and filing years are put side by side.
A narrow leadership tier over a long tail
The leading assignee holds 22 records and the top 5 combined account for 15.9% of the full 389-record dataset; the top 10 only extend that to 26.2%. With 100 companies appearing in the ranking, most of the field is thin single- or double-digit filers rather than a handful of dominant portfolios.
The first filing wave has crested
Filings rose from 37 in 2017 to a peak of 45 in 2021, then fell to 16 by 2024 — a 64% decline over that span. This looks like the tail-off after an initial land-grab around UV-LED as mercury lamps became commercially displaceable, rather than a technology going out of favour.
Disinfection mechanism claims ride on water-treatment system claims
Nearly every record sits in C02F (99.2%), but only 42.7% also carry an A61L sterilising/disinfecting class. That gap suggests many filings claim the water-system integration — housings, flow paths, sensor arrangements — around a UV-LED source, rather than the disinfection mechanism itself.
Thin filing in cleaning, aquaculture, medical and marine applications
Cleaning equipment (B08B, 3.6%), animal husbandry and fishing (A01K, 3.3%), diagnosis/surgery (A61B, 2.6%) and ship auxiliaries (B63J, 2.6%) each carry only a small slice of the 389 records, despite UV-LED disinfection being technically transferable to all of them.
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to drinking-water treatment: uv led disinfection patent landscape, with the prior art for and against each one.
Where to take this analysis
The record counts and IPC shares above set the boundaries of the field; the next step is usually narrower claim-by-claim or applicant-by-applicant work.
Map claim language against the leading assignees
With 100 companies in the ranking but only 26.2% of records held by the top 10, most competitive risk sits outside the household names. A claim-level read of the mid-tier filers is often where freedom-to-operate gaps show up first.
Explore assignees in EurekaWatch the adjacent, thinly filed branches
B08B, A01K, A61B and B63J each carry only a few percent of records despite clear technical overlap with core UV-LED disinfection. That gap is worth monitoring for incoming filings before it closes.
Track adjacent classes in EurekaRe-check the trend once 2025-2026 fill in
Publication lag means the apparent 2021-2024 decline could soften as later filings surface. Re-running the trend view in another year gives a truer read on whether the field is contracting or just paused.
Set up a filing alert in EurekaCommon questions about UV LED disinfection patents
This landscape identifies 389 published records matching UV LED disinfection terms combined with the C02F water and wastewater treatment classification, covering filings visible from 2015 through mid-2026. That figure counts records, not distinct inventions, so continuation filings and multiple jurisdictional copies of the same invention are included. Because publication typically lags filing by around 18 months, the true count for 2025 and 2026 filings will rise as more applications publish.
The ranking covers 100 companies, with the leading assignee holding 22 records and the top 5 combined accounting for 15.9% of all 389 records in scope. The top 10 only extend that share to 26.2%, which means most of the field is a long tail of smaller filers rather than a market dominated by a few large portfolios. Anyone doing competitive tracking should look past the top names to the mid-tier filers, since that is where most of the activity actually sits.
Filings rose from 37 in 2017 to a peak of 45 in 2021, then fell to 16 by 2024, a 64% decline over that three-year span. That pattern is consistent with an initial filing wave settling down after early positions were staked out, rather than a technology losing relevance. The 2025 and 2026 figures in any chart should be read cautiously, since publication lag means recent years are always undercounted at the point of measurement.
Almost all records (99.2%) sit in the core C02F water-treatment classification, and 42.7% also carry the A61L sterilising and disinfecting classification, indicating that many filings pair a disinfection mechanism with a water-system design claim. Smaller but notable overlaps appear in B01D separation processes (8.5%), B01J catalytic and chemical processes (8.0%), and niche applications like B08B cleaning, A01K animal husbandry and fishing, A61B diagnosis and surgery, and B63J ship auxiliaries, each in the low single digits. Those thinly filed adjacent classes are worth watching for emerging claims transferring UV-LED disinfection into new use cases.
Receiving office counts show the United States leading with 101 filings, followed by the European Patent Office at 59, China at 54, India at 41, the WIPO PCT route at 40, and South Korea at 20. This spread suggests applicants are pursuing protection across multiple major markets rather than concentrating filings in a single jurisdiction. For freedom-to-operate work, checking all six of these offices is more informative than relying on any single country's filings alone.
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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.