A small cluster of academic research institutions holds the bulk of the foundational claims, with the leading assignee alone accounting for 685 of the 1,402 records in this dataset. The strongest co-assignee pairing shares 604 families, showing that the broadest early claims on CRISPR enzymes, systems and screen methods were filed jointly across a small group of institutions rather than by a single company. Companies working in this space should expect to license or design around this joint-filed core rather than find one clean owner to negotiate with.

Filing peaked in 2018 at 203 records and has since settled onto a lower plateau: the tracked comparison shows 135 records in 2021 against 118 in 2024, a 13% decline over that span rather than a sharp fall. Counts for 2025 and 2026 are still incomplete because publication typically lags actual filing by about 18 months, so the recent years should not be read as evidence of a slowdown. The more accurate read is a maturing core claim set with steady, lower-volume continued filing.

Bioinformatics and readout-analysis claims (IPC class G16B) cover only 4.3% of the 1,402 records in scope, far behind the 71.1% carrying core molecular-engineering claims under C12N. This suggests the analysis and decoding layer — scoring guide assignment accuracy, converting pooled screen data to spatial or in situ formats, and automating screen scalability — carries comparatively less claim density than the underlying perturbation system itself. Teams building software or assay methods for screen readout may find more open claim space here than in the enzyme or delivery-system layer.

US20240158840A1, filed by Yale University and published in May 2024, covers methods for decoding nucleic acid barcodes in situ using rolling circle amplification and labeled probes, and for using that decoding to run an in situ genetic screen. It sits in the newer wave of filings that move perturbation screening from pooled sequencing readout toward spatially resolved, in situ detection. Anyone building an in situ barcode-decoding or spatial screening product should review its specific claim scope directly rather than relying on the abstract alone.

Among the receiving offices tracked in this dataset, the United States leads with 417 filings, followed by WIPO PCT filings at 353 and the European Patent Office at 260. Australia, Israel and Canada follow at smaller volumes. This distribution reflects where the leading academic assignees have historically sought protection first, with PCT filings used to preserve international options before national-phase entry decisions.

The assignee ranking behind this dataset covers 100 companies and institutions, counted in records, and it is a steep curve: the leader holds 685 records, the fifth-ranked assignee holds 61, and the tenth-ranked holds 33. That drop-off after the first few names indicates a small core of research institutions built most of the foundational IP, with a long tail of much smaller filers behind them. A precise concentration percentage cannot be computed from this evidence set because the ranking and the total record count are measured in different units.