PET Radiotracer Patents: Who Leads, Where the Gaps Are 2026
PET Radiotracer Production Patents: Filing Trends and Where Claims Concentrate
17.9% of 10,729 records sit with just five assignees, while the ranked leader alone accounts for 869 records — concentration at the top with a long tail below tenth place. Filings peaked in 2018 at 446 and ran at 332 in 2017. The 2021-to-2024 span, the most recent period unaffected by publication lag, shows a 25% decline from 292 to 219 — a real cooling in a maturing production stack rather than an artefact of the cut-off.
- 1GE HEALTHCARE LTD8.1%
- 2HUMAN GENOME SCI INC4.4%
- 3ADVANCED ACCELERATOR APPLICATIONS SA1.8%
- 4VERTEX PHARMACEUTICALS INC1.8%
- 5DSM IP ASSETS BV1.7%
See the full pet radiotracer production analysis in Eureka
- The complete ranking, not just the top five
- Every IPC branch with its share of the corpus
- The most-cited records, and where claim space is still thin
Common questions on this landscape
Who holds the most PET radiotracer production patents?
One assignee leads the ranked field with 869 records, well ahead of the fifth-placed filer at 181 and the tenth-placed filer at 129. The top 5 assignees together hold 17.9% of all 10,729 records in scope, and the top 10 hold 24.6%. Below that, the field spreads into a long tail of universities, specialist radiopharma developers and diversified life-science companies each holding smaller counts.
Is patent filing in PET radiotracer production still growing?
Filing activity peaked in 2018 at 446 records and has declined since; the most recent complete comparison, 2021 to 2024, shows a 25% drop from 292 to 219. Figures from 2025 onward are still incomplete because publication typically lags filing by about 18 months, so the true 2025-2026 picture will only firm up over time. Treat the current trend as a cooling from a 2018 peak rather than a sudden collapse.
What technology areas do these patents actually claim?
The corpus skews heavily toward the tracer compound itself: A61K (medicinal preparations) appears in 72.9% of the 10,729 records and C07K (peptides & proteins) in 39.3%. Process-oriented classes such as G01N (material analysis & testing, 16.0%) and C07B (general organic synthesis methods, 10.5%) are present but thinner, which is where production-engineering claims have more room. Because a single record can carry multiple IPC classes, these shares add to more than 100% and should not be summed.
Disclaimer. This analysis is based on Patsnap Eureka data drawn from a limited snapshot of global patent records and is provided for general information and reference only. Patent data carries inherent limitations — recent filings are under-counted because of publication lag, counts may be on a record or family basis, classification and applicant-name data may contain errors or duplicates, and the underlying search query defines the scope shown — so the analysis may be incomplete or inaccurate and may not reflect the full technology landscape.
Nothing here is an exhaustive prior-art, novelty, freedom-to-operate or validity search, nor does it constitute legal, financial or professional advice, and it should not be relied upon as such. Verify independently and review with qualified patent and legal professionals before acting on it.
Method: Filing trend and technology composition. Derived from a Patsnap search on PET Radiotracer Production covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-07-31. Counts reflect published records only and shift as new filings publish. Every share divides by all records in scope. Data: Patsnap Eureka. See the full landscape report.