The dataset’s ranked leader holds 418 of 2,133 records in scope, well ahead of the fifth-place assignee at 87 and tenth place at 40. The top five combined account for 39.9% of all records, and the top ten extend that to 51.9%. This is a concentrated field at the top, but with roughly half of all activity spread across a long tail of smaller filers, so leadership at the top does not mean the field is closed to new entrants.

Filings peaked in 2018 at 133 and the last complete year-over-year comparison available shows a decline from 95 filings in 2021 to 54 in 2024, a 43% drop. However, 2025 and 2026 figures are still incomplete because publication typically lags actual filing by around 18 months, so it would be premature to call the field in permanent decline based on the most recent bars alone. Anyone using this trend for strategy should treat the last one to two years as provisional.

The vast majority of records sit in C12N (microorganisms and genetic engineering, 80.5% of records) and C12P (fermentation and enzymatic synthesis, 70.6%), meaning most claims concern the engineered host organism itself and the fermentation process built around it. Smaller but still meaningful shares touch peptide and protein claims, enzyme and DNA measurement methods, sugar and nucleic acid chemistry, and food-application uses. Because a single record can carry multiple IPC classes, these shares add up to more than 100%, and they should not be read as mutually exclusive categories.