Fastest
Eureka on the web
When you want the answer in the next five minutes.
The agent works the prompt against patents and technical literature, citing every source.
Run your analysis now →https://www.patsnap.com/resources/blog/rd-blog/municipal-solid-waste-management-patent-landscape-patent-landscape/ · Patsnap · data cut-off 2026-08-31 · downloaded from the live page
Patent Landscape · Circular EconomyMunicipal solid-waste management patents: who holds the ground and where it is still open
- Concentrated at the top. The five most active assignees account for 35.3% of all 400 records in scope, and the top ten reach 47.0% — roughly half the field sits with a long tail of single- or few-filing entrants.
- Filing accelerated hard, then cooled on paper. Filings rose from 7 in 2021 to 17 in 2024, a 143% increase, after peaking at 33 in 2020; 2025-2026 figures are still filling in due to publication lag.
- Disposal dominates, but feed and fermentation are close behind. B09B solid waste disposal covers 35.5% of records, while A23K animal feed (13.8%) and C12P fermentation (13.5%) show the field increasingly overlaps with bioconversion and feed recovery.
400
Published Records
35%
Top-5 Share of All Records
+143%
Filing Growth 2021→2024
EP
Leading Jurisdiction
Filing growth compares 2021 (7 records) with 2024 (17) — 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 400 records in scope (CR5), not by the ranked leaders only.
Published byPatsnap Research··8 min readSourced from Patsnap Eureka
Field Overview
What this landscape covers
Municipal solid-waste management patenting spans the physical separation of household and urban refuse into recoverable streams, and the downstream conversion of those streams into secondary products — compost, animal feed, fermentation substrates, refuse-derived fuel. The search set links waste-handling terms (urban solid waste, municipal refuse treatment) to recovery-side terms (material separation, recovery yield, recycled feedstock), so it captures both the sorting hardware and the biological or chemical conversion steps that follow it. Family counts, not raw document counts, are used for the ranking, which neutralises continuation filings and multi-jurisdiction duplicates.
The 400 records in scope run from 2015 through the 2026-08-31 cut-off. Because publication typically lags filing by around 18 months, the most recent one to two years understate actual filing activity and should not be read as a slowdown.
Filing activity and technology mix, 2017-2026
Source: Patsnap Eureka. Assignee ranking and totals. Derived from a Patsnap search on Municipal Solid-Waste Management Patent Landscape covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-08-31. Counts reflect published records only and shift as new filings publish.Run this in Eureka MCP
The Data
Filing trend and technology composition
Two views of the same 400-record set: activity over time, and how records distribute across IPC subclasses. Because a single record can carry several IPC classes, the composition shares add up to more than 100% of the record total.
Filing trend, 2017-2026
Filings climbed from 3 in 2017 to a peak of 33 in 2020, cooled, then rebuilt from 7 in 2021 to 17 in 2024 — a 143% increase over that three-year span. 2025 and 2026 are shown but incomplete: publication lag means recent filings are still being published.
Technology composition by IPC subclass
B09B (solid waste disposal) is the largest single subclass at 35.5% of the 400 records. A23K (animal feed, 13.8%) and C12P (fermentation and enzymatic synthesis, 13.5%) follow, indicating that a meaningful share of the filing activity treats municipal waste as feedstock for feed or fermentation products rather than purely a disposal problem. B65F (refuse handling, 10.0%), B03B (wet separation, 9.0%) and B30B (presses, 9.0%) round out the mechanical side.
Shares are the percentage of the 400 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
Source: Patsnap Eureka. Filing trend and technology composition. Derived from a Patsnap search on Municipal Solid-Waste Management Patent Landscape covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-08-31. Counts reflect published records only and shift as new filings publish.
Go deeper on Municipal Solid-Waste Management Patent Landscape with Eureka
This page is one run against one query. Ask Eureka your own question about municipal solid-waste management patent landscape and every answer comes back with the patent numbers behind it.
Try EurekaKey Patents
Most-cited records and a representative filing
Representative Filing
Method for obtaining a bio-stabilised woodland substrate from the integral cycle of urban solid waste treatment (US8187719B2)
SORAIN CECCHINI AMBIENTE SCA S.P.A.
A method for obtaining a woodland substrate from the complete recycling of the materials recovered from treatment of urban solid waste is disclosed. The woodland substrate obtained by the process is also described.Filed by Sorain Cecchini Ambiente SCA S.p.A., published 2012-05-29 — illustrates the disposal-to-secondary-product pathway that recurs across the B09B and A23K/A23J subclasses.
Most-cited records in this landscape
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | US6582486B1 | Solid combustible composition | 131 |
| 2 | US5407817A | Municipal solid waste processing facility and commercial ethanol production process | 89 |
| 3 | US6267309B1 | Municipal solid waste processing facility and commercial ethanol production process | 87 |
| 4 | US5975439A | Municipal solid waste processing facility and commercial ethanol production process | 83 |
| 5 | US5571703A | Municipal solid waste processing facility and commercial ethanol production process | 83 |
| 6 | US5506123A | Municipal solid waste processing facility and commercial lactic acid production process | 61 |
| 7 | US5779164A | Municipal solid waste processing facility and commercial ethanol production process | 57 |
| 8 | US6152974A | Solid combustible composition | 46 |
| 9 | WO1995017517A1 | Commercial ethanol production process | 41 |
| 10 | US5150844A | Apparatus for size reduction of heavy solid waste materials | 37 |
Citation counts reflect influence within the searched corpus and skew toward older records; they are not a measure of current commercial relevance.
Each row carries its publication number; clicking a row searches Eureka by that number.
Source: Patsnap Eureka. Citation counts and representative records. Derived from a Patsnap search on Municipal Solid-Waste Management Patent Landscape covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-08-31. Counts reflect published records only and shift as new filings publish.Run this in Eureka MCP
Run it yourself
Put your own technology through the same analysis
Where to run it
For builders
MCP server & REST API
When it has to run inside your own pipeline.
Patent search, landscape analysis and assignee resolution as MCP tools. Drop them into any agent framework, or call REST directly.
Browse MCP servers →Insights
What the numbers mean for a filing decision
Four read-outs from the dataset that matter more for strategy than the raw counts do.
Concentration
35.3% / 47.0%
top 5 / top 10 share of 400 records
The top of the field is not a monopoly
The five most active assignees hold 35.3% of all 400 records, and the top ten reach 47.0% — meaning just over half the field is held by companies outside the ranked leaders. That is enough concentration to require freedom-to-operate checks against the leaders, but not so much that a new entrant is boxed out entirely.
Based on the full 100-company assignee ranking returned for this search.
Momentum
+143%
filings, 2021 to 2024
Renewed filing activity after the 2020 peak
After peaking at 33 filings in 2020, activity dipped before rebuilding from 7 filings in 2021 to 17 in 2024 — a 143% increase over three years. 2025-2026 counts are still incomplete because of publication lag and should not be read as a falling trend.
2024 is treated as the most recent complete filing year.
Composition
35.5% B09B
share of 400 records
Disposal claims still dominate, but conversion is catching up
B09B (solid waste disposal) covers over a third of records, but A23K (animal feed, 13.8%) and C12P (fermentation, 13.5%) show that converting waste into feed or fermentation feedstock has become a substantial secondary claim area rather than a niche.
Subclass shares are measured against the full 400-record total and overlap because records carry multiple IPC codes.
Geography
77 EPO filings
of the tracked receiving offices
Europe and the US lead the receiving-office count
Europe (EPO, 77) and the United States (55) are the largest receiving offices tracked, with India (52) close behind and WIPO/PCT filings (27) indicating a meaningful share of applicants are pursuing multi-jurisdiction protection from the outset.
Receiving-office counts are drawn from the offices tracked for this search, not a full jurisdictional census.
Eureka AI Agent
Looking for what nobody has claimed yet?
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to municipal solid-waste management patent landscape, with the prior art for and against each one.
Source: Patsnap Eureka. Co-assignee relationships and derived observations. Derived from a Patsnap search on Municipal Solid-Waste Management Patent Landscape covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-08-31. Counts reflect published records only and shift as new filings publish.Run this in Eureka MCP
Players
Who is filing, and where the ground is still open
The leader in this ranking holds 58 records, well ahead of the fifth-place assignee at 12 and the tenth at 6 — a steep drop-off that leaves most of the ranked field with single-digit counts. Recent-year momentum among the historically largest assignees is flat: several of the leading names show no filings in the latest year, consistent with the sector's overall publication lag rather than necessarily a pullback.
Leader
58 records
top-ranked assignee
A clear single leader, then a steep drop
The top assignee holds 58 of the 400 records, more than four times the fifth-place count of 12. That gap suggests a first mover with broad claim coverage rather than several firms of comparable size contesting the same ground.
Ranked against the full 100-company assignee list for this search.
Mid-field
12 → 6
fifth to tenth place
A tight mid-field before the long tail begins
Filing counts fall from 12 at fifth place to 6 at tenth, then flatten into a long tail of assignees with only a handful of records each — a pattern typical of a field where mechanical separation know-how is common but not tightly held by any one group beyond the leader.
Top 10 combined hold 47.0% of the 400 records in scope.
Collaboration
4 pairs
co-assignee pairings
Co-filing is rare and narrowly clustered
Only four co-assignee pairs appear in this landscape, with the strongest pairing repeating across five shared records and a couple of others repeating at three. Most filers in this space are prosecuting alone rather than through joint ventures.
Co-assignee pairs counted from the shared-filing relationships in this dataset.
Recent-year filing momentum among the largest historical assignees
| Assignee | Recent year | YoY |
|---|---|---|
| Controlled Environmental Systems Corp | 0 | — |
| Protix BV | 0 | — |
| SORAIN CECCHINI AMBIENTE | 0 | — |
| ECOSTAR | 0 | — |
| PIRELLI AMBIENTE | 0 | — |
| Ambiensys SL | 0 | — |
| TEUMAN SRL | 0 | — |
| FIORENTE FRANCESCO PAOLO | 0 | — |
Source: Patsnap Eureka. Assignee-level momentum. Derived from a Patsnap search on Municipal Solid-Waste Management Patent Landscape covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-08-31. Counts reflect published records only and shift as new filings publish.Run this in Eureka MCP
What's Next
Where to take this next
The dataset points to specific follow-up questions rather than a single conclusion — use these to scope the next piece of diligence.
Check freedom-to-operate against the leader's claim set
With one assignee holding 58 of the 400 records, any filing near the disposal-to-secondary-product pathway should start with a claims review against that portfolio before drafting.
Run a claims comparisonWatch the fermentation and feed overlap
A23K and C12P together sit close in record share to the mechanical separation classes, suggesting bioconversion routes are where new competitive activity is concentrating.
Track this technology branchConfirm 2025-2026 activity once publication catches up
The most recent two years are understated by publication lag; revisit the trend line in 6-12 months before drawing conclusions about a slowdown.
Set a monitoring alertSource: Patsnap Eureka. Forward-looking reading of the same dataset. Derived from a Patsnap search on Municipal Solid-Waste Management Patent Landscape covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-08-31. Counts reflect published records only and shift as new filings publish.Run this in Eureka MCP
FAQ
Common questions about this landscape
The ranked field of 100 assignees is led by a single company holding 58 of the 400 records, well ahead of the fifth-place holder at 12 and the tenth at 6. The top five combined account for 35.3% of all records and the top ten for 47.0%, meaning just over half the field is spread across a long tail of smaller filers. This shape favours a new entrant that can find a defensible sub-claim rather than competing head-on with the leader's broad coverage.
Filing activity peaked at 33 records in 2020, dipped, then rebuilt from 7 filings in 2021 to 17 in 2024 — a 143% increase over that three-year span. The 2025 and 2026 figures shown in the trend are incomplete because publication typically lags actual filing by around 18 months, so they should not be read as evidence of a slowdown. On the data available through 2024, the field is in a renewed growth phase rather than a decline.
Solid waste disposal (IPC class B09B) is the largest single area, covering 35.5% of the 400 records in scope. Animal feed production (A23K, 13.8%) and fermentation and enzymatic synthesis (C12P, 13.5%) are the next largest, showing that a substantial share of filing treats waste as a feedstock for feed or fermentation products rather than purely as a disposal problem. Mechanical categories — refuse handling (B65F), wet separation (B03B) and presses (B30B) — each cover around 9-10% of records and represent the physical separation side of the same pipeline.
Among the receiving offices tracked for this search, Europe (EPO) leads with 77 filings, followed by the United States at 55 and India at 52. WIPO/PCT filings account for 27, and Canada and Austria each show over 20, indicating that a meaningful portion of applicants pursue protection across multiple jurisdictions rather than filing domestically only. This spread suggests the technology is commercially relevant in both mature waste-management markets and fast-growing ones.
US8187719B2, assigned to Sorain Cecchini Ambiente SCA S.p.A. and published in 2012, claims a method for producing a bio-stabilised woodland substrate from the complete recycling cycle of urban solid waste treatment. It is a representative example of the disposal-to-secondary-product pathway that recurs throughout this landscape, connecting mechanical separation (B09B) to a marketable output rather than stopping at sorting or disposal. Anyone drafting claims in the same conversion space should review its specific process steps before finalising claim language.
Answers are grounded in the same dataset. Derived from a Patsnap search on Municipal Solid-Waste Management Patent Landscape covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-08-31. Counts reflect published records only and shift as new filings publish.Run this in Eureka MCP
Research Municipal Solid-Waste Management Patent Landscape in depth with Eureka
Go past this page: query the whole municipal solid-waste management patent landscape corpus yourself, in your own scope.
Every answer comes back with patent numbers you can open.
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.