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Run your analysis now →https://www.patsnap.com/resources/blog/rd-blog/nanofiltration-membrane-technology-landscape-patent-landscape/ · Patsnap · data cut-off 2026-07-31 · downloaded from the live page
Water & Environmental · Patent LandscapeNanofiltration Membrane Patents: Who Is Filing, and Where the Field Still Has Room
- Filing growth has flattened, not accelerated. activity rose from 2 filings in 2017 to a peak of 25 in 2024, but the 2022 midpoint of 21 shows the curve levelling off well before the peak, not building toward one.
- China dominates the filing map. 76 of 152 families were filed at the Chinese receiving office, more than double the next four offices (US, EPO, WIPO, Australia) combined.
- The core IPC class is B01D, but adjacent chemistry classes barely overlap. C02F water-treatment claims appear in 84 records, while sugar, fermentation and food-related IPC classes each register only single digits — signalling narrow cross-application filing.
152
Published Records
27%
Top-5 Share of All Records
+150%
3-Yr Growth (lag-adjusted)
CN
Leading Jurisdiction
Published byPatsnap Research··7 min readSourced from Patsnap Eureka
Overview
What the nanofiltration membrane patent record shows
Nanofiltration sits between ultrafiltration and reverse osmosis, and the patent record reflects that in-between position: claims cluster around thin-film composite structures, selective ion rejection, and fouling resistance, rather than around a single dominant chemistry. The search corpus covers 152 patent families filed between 2015 and mid-2026, concentrated under separation-process class B01D and, secondarily, water-treatment class C02F.
Filing activity is not evenly spread. A majority of families were filed in China, with the United States, Europe and the PCT route trailing well behind. Citation weight, by contrast, sits with older US filings on desalination and purified-water recovery — a reminder that influence inside a citation-based search corpus favours records with more years to accumulate citations, not necessarily the techniques being filed on today.
Annual filings, 2017-2026 (2026 partial)
Source: Patsnap Eureka. Assignee ranking and totals. Derived from a Patsnap search on Nanofiltration Membrane Technology Landscape covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-07-31. Counts reflect published records only and shift as new filings publish.Run this in Eureka MCP
Filing Data
Filing trend and technology composition
The two views below give the shape of the dataset: how filing volume moved year over year, and how those filings distribute across IPC subclasses.
A flattening curve, not a rising one
Filings grew from 2 in 2017 to a peak of 25 in 2024, but the 2022 midpoint already stood at 21 — most of the growth had already happened by mid-period, and the two years since have not extended it. Because publication typically lags filing by around 18 months, the 2026 figure of 7 understates true recent activity and should not be read as a decline on its own.
Separation and water treatment dominate; adjacent uses are thin
B01D (152 records) and C02F (84) account for the bulk of the corpus, confirming the core application is liquid separation and water/wastewater treatment. Sugar refining, fermentation, food and alkali-metal compound classes each register only single-digit counts, indicating nanofiltration patenting has not spread deeply into adjacent process industries despite technical overlap.
Shares are the percentage of the 152 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 Nanofiltration Membrane Technology Landscape covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-07-31. Counts reflect published records only and shift as new filings publish.
Go deeper on Nanofiltration Membrane Technology Landscape with Eureka
This page is one run against one query. Ask Eureka your own question about nanofiltration membrane technology landscape and every answer comes back with the patent numbers behind it.
Try EurekaKey Patents
The most-cited and most representative filings
Representative Filing
US20240058754A1 — Silk-interlayer thin-film composite nanofiltration membrane
THE UNIVERSITY OF HONG KONG
The filing discloses a nanofiltration membrane built with a silk nanofiber interlayer sandwiched between a porous substrate and a selective layer, aimed at simultaneously lifting water permeance and ion rejection above commercial reference membranes.Filed by The University of Hong Kong; published 2024-02-22.
Highest-cited records in the corpus
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | US6190556B1 | Desalination method and apparatus utilizing nanofiltration and reverse osmosis membranes | 191 |
| 2 | US20040055955A1 | Production of purified water and high value chemicals from salt water | 132 |
| 3 | US20040006222A1 | Process for recovering betaine | 48 |
| 4 | WO2019003133A1 | Purification of oligosaccharides | 36 |
| 5 | CN110180402A | 一种基于界面聚合制备松散纳滤膜的方法 | 28 |
| 6 | EP2070583A2 | Production of purified water and high value chemicals from salt water | 20 |
| 7 | WO2022115584A1 | Nanofiltration membrane for precise solute-solute separation | 18 |
| 8 | WO2004002938A1 | Process for recovering betaine | 18 |
| 9 | CN111437739A | 一种聚丙烯腈基复合疏松纳滤膜的制备方法 | 17 |
| 10 | CN111450715A | 一种疏松纳滤膜及其制备方法和应用 | 17 |
Citation counts are drawn from the searched corpus only and favour older filings that have had more time to be cited; treat them as evidence of influence, not 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.
Source: Patsnap Eureka. Citation counts and representative records. Derived from a Patsnap search on Nanofiltration Membrane Technology Landscape covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-07-31. Counts reflect published records only and shift as new filings publish.Run this in Eureka MCP
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What the numbers mean for a filing decision
Three patterns stand out once family counts, receiving offices and IPC spread are put side by side.
Filing Trend
21 → 25 → 7
2022 → 2024 → 2026 (partial)
Growth has plateaued before the most recent data
The move from 21 families in 2022 to a peak of 25 in 2024 is modest given the field's four-year run-up from 2. Combined with a partial and therefore undercounted 2026, the honest read is a mature filing rate rather than an accelerating one.
Use this to size expected competitive filing volume, not to time an early-mover window.
Jurisdiction
76 of 152
families filed in China
China is the primary filing venue, by a wide margin
Half the corpus was filed at the Chinese receiving office — more than the US, EPO, WIPO, Australia and India offices combined. Freedom-to-operate work that only screens US and EP filings will miss most of the active claim space.
Chinese-language prior art searches are not optional for this technology.
IPC Spread
152 vs 84 vs ≤10
B01D vs C02F vs adjacent classes
Cross-industry filing is shallow
Sugar, fermentation, food and alkali-compound IPC classes each carry single-digit record counts despite plausible technical fit with nanofiltration separation. That gap is either unclaimed opportunity or a sign those industries route around membrane patents entirely.
Worth a closer look before assuming the low counts mean no interest.
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Looking for what nobody has claimed yet?
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to nanofiltration membrane technology landscape, with the prior art for and against each one.
Co-filing activity
| Assignee | Co-assignee | Shared families |
|---|---|---|
| Siemens Pte. Ltd. | Nanyang Technological University | 4 |
| University of South Carolina | DAVIS THOMAS A | 1 |
| Tianjin Polytechnic University | Hebei Qinyirun Technology Co., Ltd. | 1 |
| Fenfield Finland Oy | PUUPPO OUTI | 1 |
| Fenfield Finland Oy | PAANANEN HANNU | 1 |
| Fenfield Finland Oy | NYSTROM MARIANNE | 1 |
| Fenfield Finland Oy | MONTEN KAJ ERIK | 1 |
| Fenfield Finland Oy | MANTTARI MIKA | 1 |
Co-assignee pairing is limited — 10 pairs total in the corpus, with the strongest link being a single industry-university pair filing together four times. Most families are filed by a sole assignee, so joint-development filing strategy is the exception here, not the norm.
Source: Patsnap Eureka. Co-assignee relationships and derived observations. Derived from a Patsnap search on Nanofiltration Membrane Technology Landscape covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-07-31. Counts reflect published records only and shift as new filings publish.Run this in Eureka MCP
Players
Who is filing, and where momentum sits
Assignee activity is spread across Chinese universities, established membrane manufacturers and a long tail of single- or few-filing entrants. Momentum in the most recent year is thin across the board.
Momentum
+100% YoY
Tianjin Polytechnic University
One of the few assignees still filing in the latest year
Tianjin Polytechnic University recorded 2 filings in the latest year, a doubling year over year, while several other named assignees in the momentum data show zero filings in the same period.
A small base, but one of the only visible upward signals in recent-year data.
Filing Base
0 in latest year
Several established assignees
Established filers have gone quiet recently
Multiple assignees with meaningful filing history — including specialty chemical and membrane manufacturers — show no filings in the most recent tracked year, consistent with the broader plateau in the filing trend.
Recency should be checked against the 18-month publication lag before reading this as retreat.
Co-filing
4 joint filings
Strongest assignee pair
Industry-university pairing is the main collaboration pattern
The strongest co-assignee link in the dataset pairs an industrial membrane firm with a university research group across 4 filings — the clearest example of sustained joint filing in an otherwise mostly solo-filed corpus.
Other pairs in the data are single-instance collaborations.
Recent-year filing momentum by assignee
| Assignee | Recent year | YoY |
|---|---|---|
| Tianjin Polytechnic University | 2 | +100% |
| Gambro AB | 0 | — |
| DSM IP Assets B.V. | 0 | — |
| University of South Carolina | 0 | — |
| BL Technologies, Inc. | 0 | — |
| Fenfield Finland Oy | 0 | — |
| Desalination Company | 0 | — |
| King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals | 0 | -100% |
Source: Patsnap Eureka. Assignee-level momentum. Derived from a Patsnap search on Nanofiltration Membrane Technology Landscape covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-07-31. Counts reflect published records only and shift as new filings publish.Run this in Eureka MCP
What's Next
Where to take this analysis
The dataset points to specific next steps depending on whether the goal is freedom-to-operate, R&D targeting, or portfolio strategy.
Screen Chinese-language filings directly
With half the corpus filed in China, an English-only prior art screen leaves the majority of active claims unreviewed. A targeted Chinese-language search against the same IPC codes is the next practical step.
Search this space in Eureka →Test the under-claimed branches for real gaps
Thin filing counts in sugar, fermentation and food-adjacent IPC classes could reflect genuine white space or simply different claim language. Either way, the branches merit closer reading before committing R&D direction.
Explore adjacent claim space in Eureka →Track recent-year filers, not just historical leaders
Citation-weighted rankings favour older desalination-era patents. Recent-year momentum data is a better guide to who is active in the field today.
Monitor assignee activity in Eureka →Source: Patsnap Eureka. Forward-looking reading of the same dataset. Derived from a Patsnap search on Nanofiltration Membrane Technology Landscape covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-07-31. Counts reflect published records only and shift as new filings publish.Run this in Eureka MCP
FAQ
Common questions about nanofiltration membrane patents
Within this searched corpus, the highest-cited records are older US filings tied to desalination and purified-water recovery, including US6190556B1 and US20040055955A1. High citation counts here reflect years of accumulated citations rather than current filing activity, so they should be read as historically influential foundations rather than as today's leading edge. Anyone doing freedom-to-operate work should still check these families, since foundational claims on nanofiltration-plus-reverse-osmosis desalination architectures can remain broad and enforceable.
Growth has flattened rather than accelerated: filings rose from 2 in 2017 to a midpoint of 21 in 2022, then only to a peak of 25 in 2024. That trajectory suggests the field reached a mature filing rate several years ago rather than being in an early growth phase now. The 2026 count of 7 looks like a drop but is a partial year, and publication typically lags actual filing by around 18 months, so recent-year figures always understate true activity.
China's receiving office accounts for 76 of the 152 families in this corpus, more than the US, European, PCT, Australian and Indian offices combined. This concentration is consistent with China's broader manufacturing base in water treatment membranes and with domestic patent incentive programmes that reward filing volume. Practically, it means competitive intelligence and freedom-to-operate work limited to English-language or Western-office searches will miss the majority of active claims in this field.
US20240058754A1, filed by The University of Hong Kong and published February 2024, claims a thin-film composite nanofiltration membrane built with a silk nanofiber interlayer positioned between the porous substrate and the selective layer. The stated performance target is water permeance several times higher than commercially available reference membranes alongside strong ion rejection. For anyone designing membrane architectures with a biopolymer or fiber-based interlayer, this filing is a relevant reference point to review claim scope against before finalizing a similar structure.
IPC composition data shows a sharp drop-off outside the core B01D and C02F classes: sugar refining, fermentation, food and alkali-metal compound applications each register only single-digit record counts despite plausible technical overlap with nanofiltration separation chemistry. This could reflect genuine under-claiming in those adjacent industries, or it could mean those fields use different terminology and claim structures that this search string does not fully capture. Either way, it is worth a direct read of a sample of those adjacent-class records before assuming the gap is real and actionable.
Answers are grounded in the same dataset. Derived from a Patsnap search on Nanofiltration Membrane Technology Landscape covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-07-31. Counts reflect published records only and shift as new filings publish.Run this in Eureka MCP
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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.