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Run your analysis now →https://www.patsnap.com/resources/blog/rd-blog/food-packaging-and-shelf-life-patent-landscape-patent-landscape/ · Patsnap · data cut-off 2026-08-31 · downloaded from the live page
Patent Landscape · Food Packaging & Shelf LifeFood packaging and shelf-life patents: filing trends, leading assignees and open claim space
- Filing is concentrated but not locked up. the ranked leader holds 203 families while the top 5 together account for only 15.0% of all 5,116 records in scope — a long tail still has room to enter.
- Growth has cooled from its 2023 peak. filings ran from 329 in 2021 to 226 in 2024, a 31% decline over that span, though 2025-2026 figures are still filling in due to publication lag.
- Traceability and data processing now rival food science. G06Q business-data-processing claims sit in 14.2% of records alongside the expected A23L and A61K food and pharma classes, signalling a shift toward tracking and quality systems.
5,116
Published Records
15%
Top-5 Share of All Records
-31%
Filing Growth 2021→2024
US
Leading Jurisdiction
Filing growth compares 2021 (329 records) with 2024 (226) — 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 5,116 records in scope (CR5), not by the ranked leaders only.
Published byPatsnap Research··6 min readSourced from Patsnap Eureka
Overview
What this landscape covers
This dataset spans 5,116 published records filed between 2015 and 2026 that combine food packaging or shelf-life claims with tracking, mixture, or culture-handling elements — a search string that pulls in both traditional food science and the newer wave of traceability and inventory-tracking systems layered on top of it. The mix of IPC classes reflects that split: preservation and formulation chemistry sit alongside business-data-processing and material-testing claims in the same corpus.
Because publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, the most recent one to two years in any trend understate real filing activity. Patent families, not raw document counts, are used throughout the assignee ranking to avoid inflating totals through continuations or multi-jurisdiction filing of the same invention.
Filings by year, 2017-2026
Source: Patsnap Eureka. Assignee ranking and totals. Derived from a Patsnap search on Food Packaging & Shelf Life Patent Landscape covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-08-31. Counts reflect published records only and shift as new filings publish.Run this in Eureka MCP
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The data
Filing trends and technology composition
Two views of the same 5,116-record set: how filing volume has moved year over year, and which IPC subclasses carry the claim density.
Filing trend
Filings rose from 145 in 2017 to a peak of 367 in 2023, then eased to 226 by 2024 — a 31% decline from the 2021 level of 329. 2025 and 2026 figures will continue to revise upward as later-filed applications publish.
Technology composition by IPC subclass
A61K (medicinal preparations) and A23L (foods and non-alcoholic beverages) lead at 20.5% and 18.6% of records respectively, with C12N (microorganisms and genetic engineering) and G06Q (business and data processing) both above 14%. Since records can carry multiple classes, these shares add up to more than 100% of the 5,116 records in scope.
Shares are the percentage of the 5,116 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
Source: Patsnap Eureka. Filing trend and technology composition. Derived from a Patsnap search on Food Packaging & Shelf Life Patent Landscape covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-08-31. Counts reflect published records only and shift as new filings publish.
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Most-cited records and a recent filing
Recently published
Method and system for traceability, quality assessment and end of life recommendations of food item (US20260212329A1)
TATA CONSULTANCY SERVICES LIMITED
The application addresses food waste driven by short shelf life, poor forecasting, and lack of transparency: it captures an image of a food item, scans a machine-readable tag to retrieve traceability data, and applies that data to assess quality and recommend end-of-life handling.Filed by Tata Consultancy Services; published 2026-07-23, near the current data cut-off, so its claim scope is still fresh and largely untested against prior art.
Highest-cited records in this corpus
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | US20080120129A1 | Consistent set of interfaces derived from a business object model | 2,470 |
| 2 | US4760025A | Modified enzymes and methods for making same | 1,805 |
| 3 | EP0130756A1 | Procaryotic carbonyl hydrolases, methods, DNA, vectors and transformed hosts for producing them, and detergen… | 942 |
| 4 | US4656463A | LIMIS systems, devices and methods | 864 |
| 5 | US20030227392A1 | Context-aware and real-time item tracking system architecture and scenarios | 748 |
| 6 | US20170069214A1 | Unmanned aerial vehicles | 689 |
| 7 | US5671362A | Materials monitoring systems, materials management systems and related methods | 606 |
| 8 | US4827395A | Manufacturing monitoring and control systems | 589 |
| 9 | US5264366A | Protease deficient bacillus | 551 |
| 10 | US20070150387A1 | Consistent set of interfaces derived from a business object model | 512 |
Citation counts favour older records simply by virtue of time in the corpus; treat them as a signal of influence rather than of current relevance.
Each row carries its publication number; clicking a row searches Eureka by that number.
Source: Patsnap Eureka. Citation counts and representative records. Derived from a Patsnap search on Food Packaging & Shelf Life Patent Landscape covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-08-31. Counts reflect published records only and shift as new filings publish.Run this in Eureka MCP
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What the numbers mean for a filing decision
Three read-outs from the concentration, trend, and classification data that matter more than the raw totals.
Concentration
15.0% of 5,116 records
held by the top 5 assignees
No single filer controls the field
The leader holds 203 families and the top 5 combined reach only 765 records, 15.0% of all 5,116 in scope. That leaves the large majority of filing activity distributed across a long tail of single- and few-filing entrants, which is unusual for a field this mature.
Ranked leaders, 100 companies
Momentum
-31% (2021 to 2024)
complete-year filing change
Growth has cooled from its 2023 peak
Filings peaked at 367 in 2023 before falling to 226 in 2024, a 31% decline from the 2021 level of 329. That is the most recent comparison that can be trusted; 2025 and 2026 totals will still rise as later applications publish.
2024 is the last complete filing year
Classification
14.2% of 5,116 records
carry G06Q business-data-processing claims
Traceability tech is now a first-class category
G06Q sits fourth among IPC subclasses, ahead of G01N material testing and A61P therapeutic activity, and close behind the microorganism class C12N. This confirms that item-tracking and inventory-data claims are no longer a side note to food chemistry filings but a distinct competitive layer.
IPC composition, 8 leading subclasses
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Looking for what nobody has claimed yet?
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to food packaging & shelf life patent landscape, with the prior art for and against each one.
Source: Patsnap Eureka. Co-assignee relationships and derived observations. Derived from a Patsnap search on Food Packaging & Shelf Life Patent Landscape covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-08-31. Counts reflect published records only and shift as new filings publish.Run this in Eureka MCP
Players
Who is filing, and where the openings sit
The ranking spans 100 companies scored by patent family count; a handful of large filers coexist with many single- or few-filing entrants, and recent-year momentum data shows even the largest names pulling back rather than accelerating.
Scale filer
203 families
ranked leader
One name well ahead of the field
The top-ranked assignee holds 203 families, more than double the fifth-place count of 97, but still represents a small slice of the 5,116-record corpus overall.
Assignee ranking, 100 companies
Mid-tier cluster
52 families
tenth place
A tight band beneath the leader
The gap from fifth place (97) to tenth place (52) is steep, suggesting a small group of established filers rather than an even spread through the top 10.
Top 10 combined: 1,136 records, 22.2% of 5,116
Momentum
-68% to -100% YoY
recent-year change among tracked assignees
Even active filers are slowing
Several assignees with meaningful historical filings show sharp year-on-year drops in their latest tracked year, with some dropping to zero. Recent-year counts are understated by publication lag, but the direction across multiple large filers is consistent.
Recent-year momentum, tracked assignees
Recent-year filing momentum by assignee
| Assignee | Recent year | YoY |
|---|---|---|
| BioConsortia Inc | 7 | -68% |
| Chr. Hansen A/S | 1 | -75% |
| FULFIL SOLUTIONS INC | 1 | — |
| Coupang Corp | 0 | — |
| Strong Force VCN Portfolio 2019 LLC | 0 | -100% |
| Domantis Ltd | 0 | — |
| HandyLab Inc | 0 | — |
| Societe des Produits Nestle SA | 0 | -100% |
Source: Patsnap Eureka. Assignee-level momentum. Derived from a Patsnap search on Food Packaging & Shelf Life Patent Landscape covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-08-31. Counts reflect published records only and shift as new filings publish.Run this in Eureka MCP
What's next
Where to take this
The dataset points to a field still open at the edges even as its core chemistry claims are crowded.
Map the white space before filing
Under-claimed branches like machine-readable freshness tagging and traceability-linked ingredient mixtures sit at the intersection of food science and data processing, where claim density is still low relative to the core A23L and A61K classes.
Explore white space in Eureka →Track the assignees still active
With most large filers showing year-on-year declines, watching which of the ranked leaders keeps filing through 2025-2026 as data fills in will show who is still committing to this space.
Set up assignee tracking in Eureka →Source: Patsnap Eureka. Forward-looking reading of the same dataset. Derived from a Patsnap search on Food Packaging & Shelf Life Patent Landscape covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-08-31. Counts reflect published records only and shift as new filings publish.Run this in Eureka MCP
FAQ
Common questions on this landscape
This dataset contains 5,116 published records filed between 2015 and 2026 that combine food packaging or shelf-life claims with tracking, mixture, or microbial-culture elements. The count reflects a specific search string rather than every food-packaging filing ever made, so it should be read as a scoped landscape rather than the entire technology's universe. Because publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, the most recent one to two years will continue to rise as later applications are published.
The ranked leader holds 203 patent families, more than double the count in fifth place at 97, out of a ranking of 100 companies. Even so, the top 5 filers combined account for only 15.0% of all 5,116 records in scope, and the top 10 reach 22.2% — meaning the majority of filing activity comes from a long tail of smaller filers rather than a handful of dominant players. That structure suggests the field rewards specific technical niches more than broad platform claims.
Filings rose steadily from 145 in 2017 to a peak of 367 in 2023, then declined to 226 by 2024 — a 31% drop from the 2021 level of 329. That 2021-2024 comparison is the most reliable recent read because 2024 is the last year with largely complete publication data. Figures for 2025 and 2026 will still climb as pending applications publish, so they should not yet be read as a continued decline.
Medicinal preparations (A61K) and foods and non-alcoholic beverages (A23L) lead the IPC composition at 20.5% and 18.6% of the 5,116 records respectively. Microorganism and genetic-engineering claims (C12N) and business/data-processing claims (G06Q) both sit above 14%, showing that traceability and inventory software have become a real part of this landscape alongside chemistry and formulation. Because a single record can carry multiple IPC classes, these percentages add up to more than 100% of the record total.
The technology composition data points to under-claimed intersections between food chemistry and data systems, such as machine-readable freshness tagging, end-of-life quality scoring, and transport-route shelf-life prediction. These sit at lower filing density than the core A23L and A61K classes but appear in recent representative filings, such as a 2026 application combining image capture, tag scanning, and quality recommendations. A first claim in these branches would likely need to tie a specific sensing or tagging mechanism to a defined quality or logistics outcome to stand apart from the broader traceability filings already on record.
Answers are grounded in the same dataset. Derived from a Patsnap search on Food Packaging & Shelf Life Patent Landscape covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-08-31. Counts reflect published records only and shift as new filings publish.Run this in Eureka MCP
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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.