PPE Materials Patents: Leaders, Trends & White Space 2026
- Filing peaked in 2021 at 21 records and has fallen since, with the 2026 count still partial under the usual 18-month publication lag — the field looks past its filing peak rather than accelerating.
- Outerwear claims dominate the corpus A41D appears in 70 of 82 families and A62B rescue/life-saving equipment in 43, while textile chemical treatment (D06M) sits at just 12 — a narrow base relative to the garment claims built on top of it.
- No assignee shows momentum in the latest year every tracked holder, including the most active ones, logged zero filings in the most recent year — a sign of a settled rather than a contested field right now.
What this landscape covers
This dataset tracks 82 patent families filed against personal protective equipment materials, drawn from documents whose claims and descriptions reference permeation resistance, breathability, flame resistance, comfort or certification standards, and classified under A41D (outerwear and garments), A62B (rescue and life-saving equipment) or D06M (textile chemical treatment). The coverage window runs from 2015 through the 2026-07-31 data cut-off, with the earliest filings in the trend appearing in 2017.
Filing offices skew toward the United States (33 records) and PCT applications (14), with Europe, Canada, China and India each contributing single digits. That distribution points to a field where protection is filed defensively in a small number of jurisdictions rather than pursued aggressively across many markets at once.
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Filing trend and technology composition
Two views of the same 82 families: how filing activity has moved year over year, and which IPC subclasses carry the claim weight.
A peak in 2021, then decline
Filings ran from 2 in 2017 to a peak of 21 in 2021, then dropped to 4 by the 2022 midpoint and have not recovered. Treat the 2025-2026 figures as understated, since publication typically lags filing by around 18 months — but even allowing for that lag, the multi-year decline from the 2021 peak is a genuine signal, not an artefact of the cut-off.
Garment claims outweigh the chemistry underneath
A41D outerwear claims appear in 70 of 82 families and A62B rescue equipment in 43, meaning most filings describe finished garments or assemblies. D06M textile chemical treatment, the layer that actually delivers permeation and flame resistance, appears in only 12 — a much thinner claim base than the garment layer built on top of it.
Shares are the percentage of the 82 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
Go deeper on Personal Protective Equipment Materials with Eureka
This page is one run against one query. Ask Eureka your own question about personal protective equipment materials and every answer comes back with the patent numbers behind it.
Try EurekaThe prior art that everything else cites
EP2964039A4 — Personal protective equipment for CBRN or other protection
Filed by AirBoss Engineered Products and published 2016-08-31, this application (filed originally in German as "PERSÖNLICHE SCHUTZAUSRÜSTUNG FÜR CBRN- ODER ANDEREN SCHUTZ") sits in the CBRN protective-equipment branch of the corpus, an area adjacent to but distinct from the general flame- and permeation-resistant garment claims that dominate the dataset.Representative of the CBRN-specific filings rather than the largest cluster by volume.
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | US5024594A | Protective clothing material | 138 |
| 2 | US20160243383A1 | Unpowered respiratory protective headset and body suit and additional improvements to personal protective equ… | 32 |
| 3 | US20090255039A1 | Chemical protective garment with added flash fire protection | 21 |
| 4 | US8268451B2 | Chemical protective garment with added flash fire protection | 13 |
| 5 | GB1173142A | Improvements in the making of Protective Clothing Material | 10 |
| 6 | US20190030855A1 | Medical protective clothing materials | 9 |
| 7 | US20220212040A1 | Personal protective equipment ensemble made up of a launderable hood and an air dispersion protective headgear | 8 |
| 8 | WO2021214602A1 | Systems and methods for adjusting device settings of personal protective equipment | 7 |
| 9 | WO2014134715A1 | Personal protective equipment for CBRN or other protection | 7 |
| 10 | US20210316238A1 | Nonwoven material for filtration and method of making the same | 6 |
Citation counts here reflect the searched corpus only and favour older filings; a high count signals influence on later filers, not that the claims remain current or uncontested.
Each row carries its publication number; clicking a row searches Eureka by that number.
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Browse MCP servers →What the numbers mean for a filing decision
Three read-throughs from the trend, the IPC mix and the citation table.
The claim rush has already happened
The corpus peaked in 2021 and has fallen every year since on the data available. Combined with an 18-month publication lag, the true 2025-2026 counts will rise somewhat on revision, but the multi-year decline from peak is unlikely to reverse — this is a field where the busiest filing window has passed.
Garment assemblies are crowded, the underlying textile chemistry is not
Nearly all filings touch A41D garment claims, but only 12 reach into D06M textile chemical treatment — the layer that actually confers permeation or flame resistance. New entrants competing purely on garment design face a dense prior art; entrants with a genuinely new treatment chemistry face a thinner one.
One 1990s patent still anchors the field
US5024594A, "Protective clothing material," carries far more citations than any other record in the set, including filings from three decades later. That concentration suggests foundational permeation-resistance concepts are still being built on rather than replaced, which raises the freedom-to-operate bar for anyone filing broad material-composition claims.
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to personal protective equipment materials, with the prior art for and against each one.
Who holds the claims, and where they stopped
The assignee list is a long tail rather than a concentrated leaderboard, and none of the tracked holders show recent-year activity.
No active filer in the most recent year
Every assignee tracked for recent-year momentum, including AirBoss Engineered Products and the academic and corporate holders in the set, shows zero filings in the latest year. Some of that is publication lag, but a flat readout across the entire tracked list is still a meaningfully different signal than one leader pulling ahead.
One research-industry pairing stands out
The strongest co-assignee link in the dataset pairs an Italian institute of technology foundation with an Enel-affiliated production company across four shared filings — a research-institute-to-utility pairing rather than a manufacturer-to-manufacturer one, which is unusual for a garment materials field.
The most-cited patent predates the active filing window
The single most-cited record in the corpus was filed well before the 2017-2021 filing surge, meaning current filers are working in the shadow of decades-old protective-clothing-material claims rather than a recent foundational patent.
| Assignee | Recent year | YoY |
|---|---|---|
| AIRBOSS ENGINEERED PRODUCTS INC | 0 | — |
| Scott Safety | 0 | — |
| Hollingsworth & Vose Company | 0 | — |
| Johns Hopkins University | 0 | — |
| Fondazione Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia | 0 | — |
| Kailos Technology Company | 0 | — |
| UNITECH SERVICES GROUP | 0 | — |
| Enel Produzione S.p.A. | 0 | — |
Where to take this next
The dataset points to specific follow-up work rather than a single conclusion.
Check freedom-to-operate against US5024594A's family
Given how heavily this record is cited across the corpus, any new permeation-resistance material claim should be checked against its full patent family and citing chain before drafting.
Run a citation search in EurekaScope claims in the thin D06M layer
With only 12 records in textile chemical treatment against 70 in outerwear garments, a specific treatment chemistry claim has more room to be drafted narrowly and cleanly than a garment-assembly claim does.
Map the D06M subclass in EurekaWatch for revised recent-year counts
The 2025-2026 filing figures will move upward as publication catches up; re-pull the trend in six to twelve months before concluding the decline from the 2021 peak has fully stabilised.
Track filing trends in EurekaCommon questions on PPE materials patents
The dataset shows a long tail of assignees rather than one dominant holder — companies like AirBoss Engineered Products appear alongside academic institutions such as Johns Hopkins University and various corporate and institute assignees, but none show recent-year filing activity. The most influential single record by citation count, US5024594A, predates the busiest filing years and is held outside the currently active assignee set. Anyone assessing competitive position in this space should look at family counts and citation influence separately, since they point to different holders.
US5024594A, titled "Protective clothing material," carries 138 citations in this corpus, far ahead of the next most-cited record. Its influence spans decades of later filings, including material and garment patents published well into the 2010s and 2020s. High citation counts inside a searched corpus reflect age and influence more than current enforceability, so this should be treated as a freedom-to-operate flag rather than proof the claims are still the state of the art.
Filing activity peaked at 21 records in 2021 and has declined since, with a midpoint of just 4 by 2022. Because publication typically lags filing by around 18 months, the 2025 and 2026 figures in any such trend are always undercounted at the time of measurement, so the most recent one or two years should not be read as a hard stop. Even accounting for that lag, the multi-year decline from the 2021 peak suggests the field has moved past its most active filing period rather than continuing to accelerate.
Relative to the dense garment-assembly claims in A41D (70 of 82 families) and rescue equipment in A62B (43), textile chemical treatment under D06M has only 12 records and nonwoven barrier layers under D04H just 9. Headwear-integrated respiratory protection (A42B) and laminate flame-resistance interfaces (B32B) also carry comparatively few filings against the garment layer built on top of them. A narrowly drafted claim on a specific treatment chemistry or laminate interface is likely to face less crowded prior art than a broad garment-design claim.
Within this corpus, chemical protective suit filings generally combine a barrier material or laminate structure with performance claims tied to permeation resistance, flame resistance, breathability or a named certification standard. Highly cited examples such as the chemical protective garment filings with added flash fire protection layer a base barrier material with a secondary flame-resistant treatment or laminate, rather than claiming a single new chemistry outright. Reviewing the IPC composition — heavy in A41D and B32B, thinner in D06M — helps identify whether a draft claim is competing in the crowded garment-assembly space or the comparatively open textile-treatment space.
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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.