The assignee ranking covers 24 companies across 88 records in scope, and it is concentrated: the top 5 assignees together account for 71.6% of all records and the top 10 reach 86.4%. The leading assignee alone holds 20 records, well ahead of the fifth-ranked company at 6. This means a small number of established agrochemical and specialty-chemical companies control most of the documented claim space, while the remaining ranked companies each hold only a handful of filings.

Filing peaked at 24 records in 2020, the highest point in the dataset, then settled to a lower but still active level. Between 2021 and 2024, records rose from 3 to 5, a +67% increase over that span, which is genuine growth rather than a plateau. Figures for 2025 and 2026 appear lower only because publication typically lags actual filing by around 18 months, so those years should not be read as a decline.

Almost all records, 95.5% of the 88 in scope, fall under IPC class A01N covering biocides and agrochemicals generally, with 36.4% also touching A01P for pesticide activity specifically. Smaller but notable shares appear in C05G for fertiliser mixtures at 9.1%, C08L for polymer compositions at 6.8%, and C08G for condensation polymers at 5.7%. A single record commonly carries several of these classes at once, since particle size, dispersant chemistry and formulation stability claims often overlap in the same filing.

The classes with the smallest shares of the 88 records — C08L, C08G, C05G, B05D and D21H — sit well below the dominant A01N and A01P classes, suggesting formulation-side polymer chemistry and fertiliser co-formulation are comparatively thin relative to core biocide claims. Coating-process routes under B05D and pulp/paper-adjacent slime-control suspensions under D21H each cover only 2.3% of records. These narrower branches are worth a targeted freedom-to-operate check before assuming they are blocked, since claim density there is much lower than in the core.

US20180265423A1, filed by Akzo Nobel Chemicals International B.V. and published in 2018, claims a pesticide suspension built on an aqueous fertilizer solution carrying 5 to 70 wt% fertiliser and 0.1 to 60 wt% of a non-dissociating solid pesticide, with the fertiliser concentration specifically selected to stabilise the suspension. Anyone formulating a fertiliser-carrier suspension system in that same non-dissociating pesticide and concentration range should review this claim scope closely. Formulations built on dissociating actives, non-fertiliser carriers, or concentrations clearly outside that stated range sit further from this specific claim.