The dataset's ranking covers 100 companies, with the leading assignee holding 564 records against a fifth-place figure of 159 and a tenth-place figure of 108. The top five combined account for 33.1% of all 4,001 records in scope, and the top ten combined account for 48.9%. That leaves a long tail of smaller filers below the leading group, so the field is concentrated at the top but far from a monopoly.

Filings peaked at 164 in 2017 and fell to 89 by 2024, a 29% decline from the 125 filed in 2021 — based on complete-year data only. Filing counts for 2025 and 2026 appear much lower, but that reflects the roughly 18-month lag between filing and publication, not an actual collapse in activity. Any read of the trend should stop at the most recent complete year rather than extrapolate from the partial tail.

Hydrocarbon oils and refining (IPC class C10G) is the largest single category, touching 41.3% of the 4,001 records in scope, which points to co-processing biomass within conventional refinery infrastructure as the most heavily claimed approach. Fuels and firelighters (C10L) follows at 25.2%, with coke and destructive distillation (C10B) and catalysis (B01J) each above 15%. Because a single record can carry multiple IPC codes, these percentages add up to more than 100% and should not be treated as a breakdown of the whole field into non-overlapping slices.

Filing density is comparatively thin in specific sub-areas such as biomass-catalyst co-feed ratio control, low-temperature torrefaction pre-treatment, and enzymatic upgrading of pyrolysis oil, relative to the heavily claimed refining and fuels classes. These branches sit adjacent to the dominant C10G and C10L activity but have not attracted the same claim density, which typically means more room to file a defensible first claim rather than working around an incumbent's position. A freedom-to-operate search focused on these specific sub-areas is more productive than searching the broad category headings.

US20130068997A1, assigned to MARD, INC., covers agitating solid biomass particles with a gas flow to reduce particle size and co-processing the resulting biomass-catalyst mixture alongside a conventional petroleum feedstock inside a standard refinery process unit. It sits inside the C10G co-processing cluster that accounts for 41.3% of records in this dataset, so anyone building a refinery-integrated biomass conversion process should check its specific claim language on particle agitation and feedstock mixing ratios rather than assuming the whole co-processing concept is blocked. Design-around routes typically involve alternative particle-preparation methods or feedstock combination points outside the claimed process sequence.