Landfill Gas Patents: Who Leads, Where the Gaps Are 2026
- Filing has cooled since its 2023 peak of 20. activity dropped through the mid-2010s trough at 2022 (2 filings) before recovering, then eased again — this is a maturing, not an expanding, filing field.
- The most-cited prior art is a single cluster. the five top-cited records all cover landfill gas extraction devices and techniques, meaning downstream design-around effort concentrates on one control-and-piping approach.
- Filing is US-centric with a thin international footprint. 66 of the tracked filings route through the United States receiving office, versus single digits each for Europe, Australia, PCT, Canada and China.
What this landscape covers
This dataset tracks patent families filed against landfill gas extraction, leachate treatment and post-closure monitoring since 2015, drawn from records classified under solid waste disposal (B09B), fuels (C10L) and separation processes (B01D), and cross-referenced against well-drilling classifications (E21B) and material analysis (G01N) that cover the sensing and integrity-testing side of the same operations. The search string deliberately pairs landfill-specific terms — leachate recirculation, liner integrity, odor control — with the classification codes that capture how those problems get solved mechanically and analytically.
Ninety-six families sit inside the coverage window, filed almost entirely through the United States Patent and Trademark Office, with a much smaller tail through the EPO, Australia, the PCT route, Canada and China. Publication typically lags filing by around 18 months, so the most recent year in any trend line understates real filing activity.
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Filing trend and technology composition
Two views of the same 96 families: how filing volume has moved year over year, and which IPC subclasses carry the bulk of the technical content.
A peak in 2023, then pullback
Filings ran at 15 in 2017, sank to a low of 2 by 2022, then rebounded to a peak of 20 in 2023 before easing toward the partial 2026 count of 1. That shape reads as a field that had a burst of renewed interest around methane-capture efficiency and monitoring technology in the early 2020s rather than one on a sustained upward trajectory.
Solid waste disposal dominates, drilling and analysis follow
Every record in the set touches B09B (solid waste disposal), the anchor classification. E21B (well and drilling equipment) appears in 76 records, reflecting how much of the technical work is really about well construction and gas-collection infrastructure. G01N (material analysis and testing) shows up in 44 records, covering the monitoring and sensing side. Fuels (C10L), separation (B01D), soil reclamation (B09C), non-electric control systems (G05D) and pressure measurement (G01L) each sit in single digits — these are the narrower, more specialised branches of the same field.
Shares are the percentage of the 96 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
Go deeper on Landfill Gas and Leachate Management with Eureka
This page is one run against one query. Ask Eureka your own question about landfill gas and leachate management and every answer comes back with the patent numbers behind it.
Try EurekaThe prior art doing the most citation work
Landfill gas extraction systems and methods
Describes a control system that automatically determines whether a gas extraction system is releasing landfill gas into the atmosphere and automatically controls landfill gas flow to mitigate, prevent or stop that release. The system controls a valve regulating flow through well piping, using upstream pressure readings to decide when to adjust the valve position — closing the loop between real-time pressure sensing and methane-release prevention without manual intervention.Filed by LOCI CONTROLS, INC., published 2020-04-02.
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | US20170218732A1 | Devices and techniques relating to landfill gas extraction | 64 |
| 2 | US20170218730A1 | Devices and techniques relating to landfill gas extraction | 61 |
| 3 | US20170216893A1 | Devices and techniques relating to landfill gas extraction | 59 |
| 4 | US20170216892A1 | Devices and techniques relating to landfill gas extraction | 56 |
| 5 | US10029290B2 | Devices and techniques relating to landfill gas extraction | 55 |
| 6 | US20170216891A1 | Devices and techniques relating to landfill gas extraction | 53 |
| 7 | US10449578B2 | Devices and techniques relating to landfill gas extraction | 50 |
| 8 | US20170218731A1 | Devices and techniques relating to landfill gas extraction | 49 |
| 9 | WO2018194650A1 | Devices and techniques relating to landfill gas extraction | 48 |
| 10 | US20200101505A1 | Landfill gas extraction systems and methods | 47 |
Citation counts inside a searched corpus favour older filings; treat this table as a signal of influence on later filers, not a ranking of current technical importance.
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Three read-throughs from the filing trend, the citation cluster and the classification spread.
The field had one growth cycle, not a sustained one
Filings bottomed at 2 in 2022 and rebounded sharply to 20 the following year before tapering again. That pattern points to a discrete wave of innovation — likely tied to renewed regulatory or methane-capture-efficiency pressure — rather than a technology still in an expansion phase.
Design-around effort concentrates on one extraction approach
All five most-cited records describe the same family of devices and techniques for landfill gas extraction. New filers working on gas-collection hardware are almost certainly building in the shadow of this cluster, whether or not they cite it directly.
Protection strategy here is overwhelmingly domestic
With Europe, Australia, the PCT route, Canada and China each in single digits, most applicants are not pursuing broad international coverage. That leaves the door open for a first mover to establish a stronger multi-jurisdiction position relatively cheaply.
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to landfill gas and leachate management, with the prior art for and against each one.
Who is filing, and where the field is still open
Recent-year momentum is thin across the board — most tracked assignees show zero filings in the latest year, and the one exception is filing less than before.
LOCI CONTROLS INC
The only assignee with any activity in the latest tracked year, filing 1 family — down sharply from the year prior. LOCI CONTROLS also holds the representative filing on automated methane-release control, making it the name most worth watching for continuation activity even as its filing rate cools.
KITTLE PAUL A
An individual inventor-assignee with no filings recorded in the latest tracked year. Individual filers in this space tend to cluster around specific mechanical or monitoring niches rather than broad platform claims.
Beijing Chaoyang Environment Group
A Chinese state-linked environmental group with no filings in the latest tracked year, against a backdrop where China accounts for only a single receiving-office filing across the whole dataset. That gap suggests limited current Chinese patent activity in this specific claim space, at least as captured by this search.
| Assignee | Recent year | YoY |
|---|---|---|
| LOCI CONTROLS INC | 1 | -80% |
| KITTLE PAUL A | 0 | — |
| Beijing Chaoyang Environment Group Co., Ltd. | 0 | — |
| BONZO KEVIN M | 0 | — |
Where to take this analysis
The trend and citation data point to specific next steps for teams deciding where to file or who to watch.
Map the extraction-control cluster in detail
The five most-cited records share a common technical approach to gas extraction. Before filing new claims in this space, work through exactly what those records cover and where their claim boundaries sit.
Explore citation clusters in EurekaTrack LOCI Controls' continuation activity
As the only assignee with any latest-year filings, LOCI Controls is the name most likely to generate near-term continuations or new family members worth monitoring.
Set up assignee tracking in EurekaAssess the thin international filings
With most activity routed through the US, evaluate whether a stronger multi-jurisdiction filing strategy is viable for the under-claimed branches identified above.
Run a jurisdiction gap analysis in EurekaCommon questions about this landscape
This landscape tracks 96 patent families published between 2015 and mid-2026, using a search that combines landfill-specific terms like leachate recirculation and liner integrity with classification codes covering solid waste disposal, well drilling and material analysis. Filing activity peaked in 2023 at 20 families after bottoming at 2 in 2022. Because publication typically lags filing by about 18 months, the true count for the most recent years will be somewhat higher once still-pending applications publish.
LOCI Controls, Inc. is the most active recent filer and holds a representative filing on automated methane-release control using pressure-based valve adjustment. Beyond that, the assignee base includes individual inventors and a smaller number of organisational filers, with no single company holding an overwhelming share of the 96 tracked families. Most assignees in the dataset show no filings at all in the most recent tracked year, indicating a field with thin ongoing momentum rather than one dominated by a handful of aggressive filers.
Every record in this dataset touches solid waste disposal classification (B09B), the anchor category. Well and drilling equipment classification (E21B) appears in 76 of the 96 records, reflecting how much patented work concerns gas-collection well infrastructure rather than gas processing itself. Material analysis and testing (G01N) covers monitoring and sensing, appearing in 44 records, while narrower areas like fuels, separation processes and soil reclamation each account for only a handful of filings.
The data shows filings falling to a low of 2 in 2022 before rebounding sharply to 20 in 2023, then easing toward the partial 2026 figure of 1. This pattern is consistent with a discrete wave of filing activity, possibly tied to renewed attention on methane-capture efficiency or post-closure monitoring requirements, rather than a technology on a sustained growth path. Readers should treat the 2025-2026 figures as understated given the typical 18-month lag between filing and publication.
Classification volumes outside the core solid-waste-disposal and well-drilling cluster are thin: fuels, separation processes, soil reclamation, non-electric control systems and pressure measurement each carry only single-digit record counts. That suggests under-claimed territory in areas like liner integrity sensing, odor control systems and the integration of soil reclamation with active gas wells. The overwhelmingly US-centric filing pattern, with only single-digit counts in other jurisdictions, also points to open international filing space for a well-positioned applicant.
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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.