Reactive Dyeing and Salt Reduction Patents: Who Leads 2026
- A long tail dominates the field. The ranked leader holds 37 records, but the top 5 assignees combined account for only 28.4% of all 581 records in scope — most of the field sits outside any concentrated cluster.
- Filing kept rising through the most recent complete year. Filings grew 21% from 2021 (14) to 2024 (17), even after a 2019 peak of 27 — this is not a technology that has plateaued.
- Dyeing and fixation chemistry, not fibre engineering, carries the claim density. D06P dyeing and printing covers 62.5% of records, while fibre-feature class D01F sits at just 6.9% — the open ground is on the fibre side, not the dye side.
Filing growth compares 2021 (14 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 581 records in scope (CR5), not by the ranked leaders only.
What this landscape covers
Reactive dyeing accounts for a large share of cellulosic textile colouration, and the salt loads used to drive dye exhaustion onto cotton are a persistent cost and effluent problem. This landscape tracks 581 patent records published between 2015 and mid-2026 that combine reactive or salt-free dyeing with the mechanics that make it work in practice — cotton cationization, dye fixation chemistry, hydrolysis loss control, liquor ratio, effluent colour, and dyeing levelness.
The scope deliberately pairs the dyeing chemistry with the process variables that determine whether a route is commercially usable, so the dataset captures both dye-house chemistry and the surrounding process engineering rather than dye molecules in isolation.
Filing trends and technology composition
Two views of the same 581 records: how filing activity has moved year over year, and which IPC subclasses carry the claim density.
Filing trend
Filings rose from 10 in 2017 to a peak of 27 in 2019, then continued at a materially higher level than the 2017 baseline; 2021 to 2024 alone grew 21% (14 to 17). Counts for 2025 and 2026 are still filling in because publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, so the most recent years should not be read as a slowdown.
Technology composition
D06P (dyeing and printing textiles) touches 62.5% of the 581 records, well ahead of D06M textile chemical treatment (27.5%) and C09B organic dyes and pigments (25.1%). Records can carry several IPC classes at once, so these shares add up to more than 100% — the pattern shows where claim activity clusters, not how records are split into buckets.
Shares are the percentage of the 581 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
Go deeper on Reactive Dyeing and Salt Reduction with Eureka
This page is one run against one query. Ask Eureka your own question about reactive dyeing and salt reduction and every answer comes back with the patent numbers behind it.
Try EurekaMost-cited records and a representative claim
US6582478B1 — Process for preparative and reactive dyeing of cellulose material
The invention relates to a process for preparative and reactive dyeing of cellulose material. In order to shorten the process time of conventional preparing agents and continuous operation, to make superfluous neutralizing agents for removing excess peroxy compounds as well as to reduce the mechanical equipment required vis-à-vis prior art and to reduce the use of chemical agents, the cellulose material soaked with the treatment liquor is continuously dried with pulsated air at approximately the same disintegration rate as the peroxy compounds thus used. Alkali remaining in the material from pretreatment which remained in the material is used for dyefixing said material.Filed by A. Monforts Textilmaschinen GmbH & Co., granted 2003-06-24.
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | US5580941A | Graft copolymers of unsaturated monomers and sugars, a process for the production and the use thereof | 141 |
| 2 | US20070093162A1 | Fabric and a method of making the fabric | 104 |
| 3 | US5854321A | Graft copolymers of unsaturated monomers and sugars, a process for the production and the use thereof | 88 |
| 4 | US5760154A | Graft copolymers of unsaturated monomers and polyhydroxy compounds, a process for their production and their … | 81 |
| 5 | US5854191A | Graft copolymers of unsaturated monomers and sugars, a process for the production and the use thereof | 73 |
| 6 | US20120076971A1 | Air rich yarn and fabric and its method of manufacturing | 54 |
| 7 | US4439203A | Process for improving the wetfastness of dyeings, printings and optical brightenings on cellulosic substrates… | 44 |
| 8 | US5783616A | Graft copolymers of unsaturated monomers and sugars, a process for the production and the use thereof | 41 |
| 9 | WO1999034054A1 | Process for removal of excess dye from printed or dyed fabric or yarn | 39 |
| 10 | US5172443A | Method and apparatus for wet-finishing textile goods | 37 |
Citation counts favour older records simply because they have had longer to be cited; treat this table as a map of influence within the corpus, not a ranking of current relevance.
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-outs from the dataset that matter more than the raw counts on their own.
No single owner controls the field
The ranked leader holds 37 records out of 581, and the top 5 combined reach only 28.4% of all records in scope. That is a meaningful cluster but far from a blocking position — most of the landscape is held by entrants with a handful of filings each.
Activity is still building, not fading
Filings grew from 14 in 2021 to 17 in 2024, a 21% rise, after an earlier peak of 27 in 2019. Because publication lags filing by about 18 months, the dip visible in 2025-2026 data reflects reporting lag rather than a real slowdown.
Claim density sits in dye-house chemistry
D06P dyeing and printing textiles appears in 62.5% of the 581 records, well above textile chemical treatment (27.5%) and organic dyes (25.1%). Fibre-feature classification D01F, by contrast, appears in only 6.9% — an indicator of where fewer claims currently sit.
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to reactive dyeing and salt reduction, with the prior art for and against each one.
| Assignee | Co-assignee | Shared families |
|---|---|---|
| Bayer AG | Novo Nordisk A/S | 7 |
| Novozymes A/S | Bayer AG | 6 |
| DyStar Colours Deutschland GmbH | EHRENBERG STEFAN | 4 |
| Imperial Chemical Industries Ltd | GORDON ROY | 2 |
| Imperial Chemical Industries Ltd | COLLINS GEOFFREY WILLIAM | 2 |
| Imperial Chemical Industries Ltd | BURKINSHAW STEPHEN MARTIN | 2 |
| DyStar Colours Deutschland GmbH | WORNER JORG | 2 |
| DyStar Colours Deutschland GmbH | SCHRELL ANDREAS | 2 |
Ten co-assignee pairings appear in the dataset, with the strongest linking Bayer and Novo Nordisk, and a second linking Novozymes with Bayer — evidence of enzyme-and-chemicals collaboration reaching into dyeing process patents rather than siloed single-owner filing.
Who is filing, and where the activity has cooled
The ranking spans 100 companies counted by records, not a top-50 or top-100 cut — it is the entire set the data endpoint returns for this scope.
A dye-chemistry specialist still tops the ranking
The leading assignee's 37 records put it clearly ahead of fifth place at 29, but the gap narrows fast after that — by tenth place the count is down to 14, showing a shallow rather than steep concentration curve.
Some historic leaders have gone quiet
A cluster of assignees with substantial historic filing — including several of the dye-industry names in the ranking — show zero records in the latest year. That does not mean exit; it is consistent with mature portfolios shifting to defence rather than new filing, or with publication lag masking recent activity.
Enzyme and specialty-chemicals players co-file
The strongest co-assignee pairings connect enzyme producers with specialty chemicals groups, pointing to biocatalytic routes to salt-free or low-salt dyeing being developed jointly rather than by either side alone.
| Assignee | Recent year | YoY |
|---|---|---|
| DyStar Textilfarben GmbH & Co Deutschland KG | 0 | — |
| Lenzing AG | 0 | — |
| Imperial Chemical Industries Ltd | 0 | — |
| Novozymes A/S | 0 | — |
| DyStar Colours Distribution GmbH | 0 | — |
| DyStar Colours Deutschland GmbH | 0 | — |
| Evolved by Nature Inc | 0 | -100% |
| Hoechst AG | 0 | — |
Where to take this
The dataset points to specific next steps depending on whether the question is freedom-to-operate, R&D direction, or portfolio strategy.
Map claims against a specific process route
Filing density in D06P and D06M does not tell you whether your exact liquor ratio or fixation chemistry is covered — that requires reading claims against the specific route.
Explore this landscape in EurekaTrack the quiet legacy filers
Assignees with zero filings in the latest year may still hold blocking claims from earlier grants; a freedom-to-operate check should not assume inactivity means an open field.
Run a freedom-to-operate check in EurekaWatch the enzyme-chemicals co-filing pattern
Cross-assignee filing between biocatalyst and specialty-chemicals groups suggests joint R&D paths worth monitoring for salt-free dyeing routes as they mature.
Monitor new filings in EurekaCommon questions about this landscape
It is only moderately concentrated. The leading assignee holds 37 of the 581 records in scope, and the top 5 assignees combined reach 28.4% of all records — a real cluster but not a dominant one. By the tenth-ranked assignee the count has fallen to 14 records, and the ranking runs to 100 companies, so most of the field is held by smaller filers rather than a handful of blocking owners. This shape favours new entrants who can find specific, unclaimed process combinations rather than trying to out-file the leaders on core chemistry.
Yes, based on the last fully published years. Filings rose from 14 in 2021 to 17 in 2024, a 21% increase, following an earlier peak of 27 in 2019. The apparent decline in 2025 and 2026 in the raw counts is a reporting artefact: publication typically lags filing by around 18 months, so the most recent one to two years are always undercounted at any point in time. Treat 2024 as the most recent year that can be read reliably.
US6582478B1 covers a specific process for preparative and reactive dyeing of cellulose material, in which cellulose soaked with treatment liquor is continuously dried with pulsated air timed to the disintegration rate of peroxy compounds, and residual alkali from pretreatment is reused to fix the dye rather than being neutralised separately. It is a process patent tied to that combination of continuous drying and alkali reuse, not a claim over reactive dyeing broadly. Anyone using a different drying mechanism or a separate neutralisation step is working outside its specific claim scope, though adjacent process patents in the same dataset should still be checked.
Relative to the core dyeing chemistry, fibre-feature engineering (IPC class D01F) appears in only 6.9% of the 581 records, well below dyeing and printing chemistry at 62.5%. This suggests less claim density around fibre-level pretreatment such as cationization built into the fibre itself, closed-loop liquor reuse systems, and effluent decolourisation methods applied after dyeing rather than dye chemistry changes. These are reasonable areas to search closely before filing, since low density can mean either genuine white space or simply that filers have not yet framed claims that way.
The ranking includes 100 companies measured by record count, led by a dye-industry specialist at 37 records, with several long-standing names — including some of the historic dye and textile-chemical majors in this dataset — showing zero filings in the latest recorded year. That does not necessarily mean withdrawal from the field; it is consistent with mature portfolios being maintained rather than expanded, or with recent filings not yet published. Co-assignee patterns also show enzyme producers filing jointly with specialty-chemicals companies, indicating some of the more recent activity is collaborative rather than led by a single traditional dye house.
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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.
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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.