MOF Catalyst Design Patents: Who Leads, Where the Gaps Are 2026
- Filings peaked in 2021 at 44 and have declined since, with the most recent full year sitting well below the midpoint — a maturing filing cycle rather than a growing one.
- China and the United States dominate filing office activity (140 and 102 respectively), while WIPO, Europe, India and South Korea trail far behind, marking this as a two-jurisdiction race so far.
- Several of the most active historical assignees show 0 filings in the latest year, including University of California and MIT, which points to either a pause or a shift toward trade-secret practice rather than continued patenting.
Filing growth compares 2021 (44 records) with 2024 (36) — 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 364 records in scope (CR5), not by the ranked leaders only.
What this landscape covers
Metal-organic framework (MOF) catalyst design sits at the intersection of coordination chemistry and industrial catalysis: porous coordination polymers engineered with open metal sites or single-site metal centres to drive selective chemical transformations. This landscape draws on 364 patent families published between 2015 and mid-2026, filtered to documents that combine MOF or porous-coordination-polymer terminology with catalytic-function language and classified under catalysis, organo-metallic chemistry, or adsorbent-related IPC codes.
Because publication typically lags filing by roughly eighteen months, the last one to two years in any trend understate real filing activity. The picture below should be read as a record of claims made through the data cut-off, not a live snapshot of what is being filed today.
Filing trend and technology composition
Two views of the same 364-family dataset: how filing volume has moved year over year, and how those filings distribute across the IPC subclasses that define the technology's actual scope.
A filing cycle that has already crested
Annual filings rose from 35 in 2017 to a peak of 44 in 2021, then fell back toward the midpoint of 27 in 2022 and continued down toward 5 in the most recent (partial) year. That trajectory — rise, peak, decline — is more consistent with a technology area moving from active claim-staking into consolidation than one still in an early growth phase, though the last year or two is undercounted due to publication lag.
Catalysis code dominates, but the spread is wide
B01J (chemical and physical processes, including catalysis) appears in 360 of 364 records, confirming the search is on-target. Beneath that near-universal code, C07C (acyclic/carbocyclic compounds) and C07F (organo-metallic compounds) carry the bulk of secondary classification, with B01D (separation), C08G (condensation polymers), C07D (heterocyclics), C01B (inorganics) and C02F (water treatment) each present at meaningfully lower but non-trivial volumes — evidence that MOF catalyst claims are being written into hydrocarbon processing, polymer synthesis, gas separation and water treatment applications, not just pure catalysis claims in isolation.
Shares are the percentage of the 364 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
Go deeper on Metal-Organic Framework Catalyst Design with Eureka
This page is one run against one query. Ask Eureka your own question about metal-organic framework catalyst design and every answer comes back with the patent numbers behind it.
Try EurekaThe documents anchoring this field
US11739274B2 — Metal-organic framework catalysts and their use thereof in catalytic cracking
A hydrocarbon feed stream, particularly one comprising heavier hydrocarbons, may be converted to valuable products such as motor gasoline and/or lubricating oil by employing one or more MOF catalysts, which may be prepared from a precursor metal-organic framework (MOF). A MOF catalyst may be prepared by exchanging one or more organic linking ligands of the precursor MOF for an organic linking ligand having a different acidity and/or electron-withdrawing properties, which, in turn, may affect catalytic activity.Filed by Exxon Mobil Technology and Engineering Company, granted 2023-08-29 — a rare recent grant in a field where most of the heavily-cited prior art dates to the mid-2000s.
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | US20060252641A1 | High gas adsorption in a microporous metal-organic framework with open-metal sites | 142 |
| 2 | US7662746B2 | High gas adsorption metal-organic framework | 105 |
| 3 | CN104857988A | 一种杂多酸改性Zr-MOF催化剂及其制备方法与应用 | 61 |
| 4 | CN102744105A | 多孔性金属-有机骨架物质的功能化方法及其应用 | 58 |
| 5 | WO2006110740A2 | High gas adsorption in a microporous metal-organic framework with open-metal sites | 56 |
| 6 | WO2015149072A1 | Metal-organic frameworks containing nitrogen-donor ligands for efficient catalytic organic transformations | 46 |
| 7 | US20210379559A1 | Modified Metal-Organic Framework (MOF) Compositions, Process of Making and Process of Use Thereof | 44 |
| 8 | US20170182486A1 | Metal-organic frameworks containing nitrogen-donor ligands for efficient catalytic organic transformations | 42 |
| 9 | WO2015149068A1 | Chiral ligand-based metal-organic frameworks for broad-scope asymmetric catalysis | 42 |
| 10 | US20190217270A1 | Metal organic frameworks and methods of making and using same | 41 |
Citation counts favour older filings inside any searched corpus — read them as a signal of influence on later filers, not as a ranking of current commercial relevance.
Patent titles are shown in the language they were filed in, not translated, so that each record stays verifiable against the original filing — a translated title will not match in Eureka or in any national register. Each row carries its publication number; clicking a row searches Eureka by that number.
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Browse MCP servers →What the numbers say about where this field stands
Reading the trend, the IPC spread and the citation table together gives a more reliable picture than any single chart.
A crested wave, not a rising one
The climb from 35 filings in 2017 to a peak of 44 in 2021, followed by a fall past the 2022 midpoint of 27 down toward 5 in the latest partial year, describes a filing cycle that has already passed its high point. New entrants now face a denser prior-art base than filers did five years ago.
The open-metal-site core is heavily cited and old
The two most-cited records in the corpus — both on open-metal-site MOF gas adsorption — date to the mid-2000s and carry 142 and 105 citations respectively. Anything touching open-metal-site architecture inherits this prior-art density.
A two-jurisdiction contest with a long tail
China leads on filing office count at 140, with the United States close behind at 102. WIPO, Europe, India and South Korea each sit well below both, meaning strategic decisions in this space are still primarily a China/US calculation.
Prior leaders have gone quiet
University of California and MIT both show zero filings in the latest year with -100% year-on-year change; Michigan, ExxonMobil, NuMat and University of Chicago also register zero in the latest year. That is consistent either with a genuine slowdown or with a shift away from patenting toward trade secrecy or academic publication.
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to metal-organic framework catalyst design, with the prior art for and against each one.
Who is active, and where the activity is concentrated
The assignee base includes long-standing university groups, a handful of energy and chemicals majors, and a thin layer of co-filing partnerships — but recent-year activity has gone quiet across nearly all of the historically most active names.
University groups built the foundational IP, then paused
The Regents of the University of California (University of California Board of Regents), Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) (MIT) and University of Chicago all show zero filings in the most recent year, several with -100% year-on-year change. These groups anchor much of the historical prior art on open-metal-site chemistry.
Industrial filers are present but not currently active
ExxonMobil Technology and Engineering Company, together with Dow Global Technologies LLC and Dow Technology Investments LLC (Dow entities), hold filings applying MOF catalysts to hydrocarbon processing, but none register activity in the latest year.
Collaboration is real but shallow
Ten co-assignee pairs appear in the corpus, the strongest being Paul Scherrer Institute with METAFUELS AG at 6 shared filings, and The Regents of the University of California with BASF SE (BASF) at 5. Most pairs, however, sit at 3 or fewer joint filings.
| Assignee | Recent year | YoY |
|---|---|---|
| The Regents of the University of California | 0 | -100% |
| Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) | 0 | -100% |
| The Regents of the University of Michigan | 0 | — |
| ExxonMobil Technology and Engineering Company | 0 | — |
| NuMat Technologies, Inc. | 0 | — |
| University of Chicago | 0 | — |
| King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals | 0 | — |
| École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) | 0 | — |
Where to take this analysis
The landscape above is a starting point for a freedom-to-operate check or a whitespace scan, not a substitute for one.
Run a claim-level comparison against US11739274B2
Compare a proposed ligand-exchange or precursor-MOF process against the claims of the most recent heavily-referenced grant in this space before committing to a process route.
Open in Patsnap Eureka →Track the quiet assignees for renewed activity
Several long-standing filers show zero activity in the latest year; a monitoring alert will catch the moment any of them resumes filing, before a public announcement does.
Set up monitoring in Patsnap Eureka →Scope the under-claimed branches before drafting
The water-treatment and condensation-polymer overlaps carry materially fewer filings than the catalysis core — worth a dedicated search before assuming the space is occupied.
Explore whitespace in Patsnap Eureka →Common questions on MOF catalyst design patents
The dataset behind this landscape identifies 364 patent families published between 2015 and mid-2026 that combine MOF or porous-coordination-polymer terminology with catalytic-function claims. Filing families, rather than raw document counts, are used here because they neutralise duplicate continuation filings and multiple jurisdictional copies of the same invention. Because publication lags filing by roughly eighteen months, the true current total is higher than what has been published so far.
No — filings rose from 35 in 2017 to a peak of 44 in 2021, then declined toward 5 in the most recent partial year, with a midpoint of 27 in 2022. That shape describes a filing cycle that has already crested rather than one still accelerating. Some of the drop in the last year or two is an artefact of publication lag, but the decline is visible well before the most recent year, so it is not fully explained by that lag alone.
China's patent office leads with 140 filings in this dataset, followed by the United States at 102. WIPO's PCT route, the European Patent Office, India and South Korea all trail well behind those two, at 43, 29, 17 and 10 respectively. Anyone assessing freedom to operate in this space should prioritise a China and US clearance search before extending to other jurisdictions.
US11739274B2, granted 29 August 2023 to Exxon Mobil Technology and Engineering Company, claims MOF catalysts prepared by exchanging the organic linking ligands of a precursor metal-organic framework for ligands with different acidity or electron-withdrawing properties, applied to catalytic cracking of heavier hydrocarbon feeds into products like motor gasoline and lubricating oil. It is a comparatively recent grant in a field where the most heavily-cited prior art dates back to the mid-2000s. Anyone working on ligand-exchange routes to tune MOF catalyst acidity for hydrocarbon conversion should review its claims directly before finalising a process design.
In this dataset, University of California, MIT, University of Michigan, ExxonMobil, NuMat and University of Chicago all show zero filings in the latest year, several with a -100% year-on-year change. This could reflect a genuine slowdown in patenting activity, a shift toward publishing research openly rather than filing, or simply the publication lag that affects the most recent one to two years in any patent dataset. It is worth monitoring these assignees directly rather than assuming the technology itself has stalled.
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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.