Food Waste Disposer Patents: Who Leads, Where the Gaps Are 2026
- One company dominates the ranking. the leading assignee holds 278 families against a fifth-place count of just 14, in a ranking of 57 companies.
- Grinding mechanism claims sit on old, heavily-cited art. the most-cited record, US6007006A, carries 167 citations and dates the core shredder-plate design decades back.
- Filing has kept growing through the recent complete years. 2021 to 2024 filings rose from 4 to 5 for the tracked figure, a +25% climb, even as the peak year of 18 filings (2022) sits earlier in the window.
Filing growth compares 2021 (4 records) with 2024 (5) — 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.
What this landscape covers
This landscape covers household food waste disposers and organic waste collection systems — the grinding mechanisms that shred food waste at the sink, and the collection-side elements around sewer loading, source separation, bin odour and resident participation that determine whether a disposer program actually works at the municipal level. The dataset spans 407 published records filed between 2015 and mid-2026, drawn from a search combining disposer and collection-system terms with grinding, sewer-impact, separation-rate, odour-control, collection-frequency and participation language.
Because publication trails filing by roughly 18 months, the last one to two years in any trend chart will read lower than the true filing rate once the backlog clears — treat 2025 and 2026 as still filling in, not as a slowdown.
Filing trend and technology composition
The filing trend and the IPC breakdown together show a field that is mechanically mature at its core and still adding claims around the edges — motor control, acoustics and vibration damping are minority classes but they are where recent activity concentrates.
Filing trend, 2017-2026
Filings ran from 8 in 2017 to a peak of 18 in 2022, then continued at a level that, on the complete-year figures given, rose 25% from 2021 to 2024. 2025 and 2026 counts are understated by the publication lag and should not be read as a decline.
Technology composition by IPC subclass
E03C (plumbing and sanitary fittings) and B02C (crushing, grinding and pulverising) dominate, covering 75.4% and 59.7% of the 407 records in scope respectively — expected, since a disposer record typically claims both the plumbing fitting and the grinding mechanism. Smaller subclasses like H02K (electric motors), G10K (acoustics) and F16F (springs and vibration dampers) each sit under 3% of records, marking narrower, less-crowded claim territory.
Shares are the percentage of the 407 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
Go deeper on Household Food Waste Disposers and Collection with Eureka
This page is one run against one query. Ask Eureka your own question about household food waste disposers and collection and every answer comes back with the patent numbers behind it.
Try EurekaThe most-cited prior art
US6439487B1 — Grinding mechanism for a food waste disposer and method of making the grinding mechanism
A grinding mechanism for a food waste disposer, enclosed in a housing, built from a shredder plate assembly — an upper rotating plate and a lower lug support plate with integrally formed shredder lugs and tumbling spikes — paired with a stationary shredder ring fixed to the housing and carrying a plurality of teeth. The upper plate's key slots and key holes receive the fixed lugs and spikes from the lower plate.Filed by Emerson Electric; granted 2002-08-27. Cited 98 times inside this corpus, making it the second most-cited record after US6007006A.
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | US6007006A | Food waste disposer | 167 |
| 2 | US6439487B1 | Grinding mechanism for a food waste disposer and method of making the grinding mechanism | 98 |
| 3 | US6481652B2 | Food waste disposer having variable speed motor and methods of operating same | 92 |
| 4 | US6854673B2 | Food waste disposer having a variable speed motor | 60 |
| 5 | US6719228B2 | Baffle for a food waste disposer to reduce noise and associated methods | 44 |
| 6 | US20050236502A1 | Food waste disposer shredder assembly | 42 |
| 7 | US20080116305A1 | Food Waste Disposer With Grinding Mechanism With Windowed Grind Ring | 40 |
| 8 | US20020104909A1 | Food waste disposer employing switched reluctance machine | 40 |
| 9 | US7264188B2 | Noise baffle for food waste disposer | 38 |
| 10 | US7753297B2 | Food waste disposer with grinding mechanism with windowed grind ring | 37 |
Citation counts favour older records simply because they have had longer to accumulate citations inside this corpus — read them as a signal of influence on later filings, not as a measure of current commercial relevance.
Each row carries its publication number; clicking a row searches Eureka by that number.
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Three patterns matter more than the raw counts: where the claim density sits, who actually holds the blocking art, and where the collection-side technology has been left comparatively open.
The core mechanism is heavily claimed
Plumbing-fitting and grinding-mechanism classes cover the large majority of records, meaning a new disposer filing will almost certainly land near existing claims on the shredder plate, ring and housing arrangement rather than in open territory.
The most-cited record is also the oldest in the top group
US6007006A and US6439487B1 anchor most later grinding-mechanism filings. High citation counts here reflect how long these records have been in the corpus, not that the underlying mechanism is still the most competitive design choice.
One assignee holds most of the ranked families
Across the 57 companies in the ranking, the leader's family count is roughly twenty times the fifth-place count, which means most of the co-assignee and collaboration signal in this field runs through one company's internal inventor network rather than across firms.
Filing is still rising on the last complete years
The 2021-to-2024 figures show continued growth, not a plateau — useful context against the peak year of 2022, since a single peak year followed by lower raw counts can otherwise be misread as decline.
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to household food waste disposers and collection, with the prior art for and against each one.
Who holds the claim space
The ranking is led by one company by a wide margin, with the next tier made up of individual inventors and mid-sized manufacturers who each hold a handful of families — a pattern typical of a mechanically mature product where most incremental filings come from the incumbent's own R&D pipeline.
One company sets the boundary for shredder-plate claims
The leading assignee's family count dwarfs the rest of the ranked list, and its strongest co-assignee pairings are with individual named inventors rather than other companies — consistent with an in-house engineering team iterating on the same core mechanism.
A long tail of small filers below the leader
Fifth place holds 14 families and tenth place holds 5 — a steep drop from the leader that leaves most of the ranked list as single-digit filers, including several individual inventors and regional appliance makers.
Recent-year activity has gone quiet across tracked assignees
The named assignees tracked for recent momentum, including the leader, all show zero filings in the latest year and one shows a -100% YoY change — a pattern that reflects the publication lag rather than an actual stop in R&D.
| Assignee | Recent year | YoY |
|---|---|---|
| Emerson Electric Co. | 0 | — |
| InSinkErator LLC | 0 | -100% |
| Johnson Electric Holdings Limited | 0 | — |
| HANSON STEVEN P | 0 | — |
| BERGER THOMAS R | 0 | — |
| JARA ALMONTE CYNTHIA C | 0 | — |
| Tianyou Electric Appliance (Suzhou) Co., Ltd. | 0 | — |
| ANDERSON SCOTT W | 0 | — |
Where to take this
The dataset points to a mechanically saturated core and a comparatively open collection-side layer. The next step is deciding which of those two you are actually filing into.
Map a specific claim against the leader's portfolio
Before drafting around the shredder plate, ring or housing, check it against the leading assignee's family and its strongest co-assignee pairings to see whether the exact configuration is already covered.
Explore the assignee portfolio in EurekaTest white space in bin odour and participation systems
Odour control, resident participation and collection-frequency optimisation carry thin IPC coverage relative to the grinding mechanism, making them a more promising area for a first-in claim.
Run a white-space search in EurekaWatch for the 2025-2026 filing backlog to clear
Recent-year counts understate true filing activity because of publication lag; revisit the trend once 2025 and early 2026 records finish publishing before concluding the field has slowed.
Track filing trends in EurekaCommon questions
One company leads the ranking of 57 companies by a wide margin, holding 278 patent families against a fifth-place count of only 14. Its strongest co-assignee relationships are with individually named inventors rather than other companies, which suggests the portfolio is built mostly through in-house engineering rather than acquisition or joint filing. Anyone entering this space should check a proposed claim against this leader's family before drafting, since it covers the largest share of the grinding-mechanism art.
The most-cited records in this field, including US6439487B1 and US6007006A, claim the mechanical grinding assembly itself: a shredder plate with lugs and tumbling spikes, a stationary shredder ring with teeth, and the housing and key-slot arrangement that lets these parts fit together and rotate. Later filings extend this into variable-speed motor control, noise-reducing baffles, and the plumbing fittings that connect the unit to the sink drain. Most records in this landscape carry both a plumbing-fitting class (E03C) and a grinding class (B02C), reflecting how tightly the mechanical and fitting claims are bundled together.
On the last complete years available, yes: filings rose from 4 in 2021 to 5 in 2024, a 25% increase, with a peak year of 18 filings in 2022 earlier in the window. The 2025 and 2026 figures in this dataset look lower, but that is expected because publication lags filing by around 18 months, so the newest filings have not all published yet. Reading the most recent one to two years as a slowdown would be a misinterpretation of the lag, not a real signal.
The core grinding mechanism and plumbing fitting are heavily claimed, covering 59.7% and 75.4% of the 407 records respectively, so a new filing there faces dense prior art. The collection side of the field — bin odour control, resident participation systems, collection-frequency optimisation and sewer loading impact monitoring — carries much thinner coverage, and classes like acoustics (G10K) and vibration damping (F16F) sit under 2% of records each. These narrower branches are a more realistic target for a first claim than the shredder plate itself.
The ranking shows one company well ahead of everyone else, with 278 families compared to 14 at fifth place and 5 at tenth place, across 57 ranked companies. A precise concentration percentage cannot be computed from this evidence because the ranking and the overall record total are not directly comparable units, but the gap between first and fifth place alone indicates a field led by a single incumbent rather than several evenly matched competitors. New entrants are more likely to find room in adjacent collection-system claims than in a head-on challenge to the leader's grinding-mechanism art.
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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.