Sprayer Cleaning Patents: Who Leads, Where the Gaps Are 2026
Sprayer cleaning and residue management patents: mapping who owns closed transfer and rinsate handling
Concentration is modest at the top. the leading assignee holds 26 records and the top 5 combined account for just 21.6% of the 352 records in scope — no single owner controls the field. Annual filings rose from 14 in 2017 to a peak of 20 in 2021, then declined to 16 by 2024 — a -20% change over that three-year window. Counts for 2025 and 2026 are still climbing as publication lag (typically around 18 months) catches up with filing dates, so the apparent recent drop should not be read as the field cooling.
- 1ABEC INC26
- 2ECOLAB USA INC15
- 3BISSELL INC13
- 4BLUE PENNY LLC11
- 5DEERE & CO11
See the full sprayer cleaning and residue management 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 sprayer cleaning patents
Who holds the most patents in sprayer cleaning and residue management?
The leading assignee in this dataset holds 26 of the 352 records in scope, with the field dropping off quickly after that — the fifth-ranked company holds 11 and the tenth holds 8. The top 5 assignees combined account for only 21.6% of all records, and the top 10 for 34.4%, so ownership is spread across a long tail of smaller filers rather than concentrated in one or two companies. Anyone doing freedom-to-operate work should expect to check a wide list of assignees rather than a handful of dominant players.
Is patent filing in sprayer and tank cleaning technology growing or slowing?
Filings rose from 14 in 2017 to a peak of 20 in 2021, then eased to 16 by 2024, a -20% change over that span. Counts for 2025 and 2026 look lower still, but that is expected: publication typically lags filing by around 18 months, so the most recent one to two years in any patent dataset are undercounted. Based on the complete years through 2024, the field looks like a post-peak plateau rather than a genuine decline.
What technology areas dominate sprayer cleaning patent claims?
Cleaning chemistry leads: detergent and cleaning-composition claims (IPC class C11D) appear in 23.6% of the 352 records, more than any single hardware class. Cleaning and washing appliances (A47L) follow at 18.8%, sterilising and disinfecting (A61L) at 15.1%, and general cleaning apparatus (B08B) at 14.2%. Because a single record can carry multiple IPC classes, these figures overlap rather than summing to 100%, but the ordering shows that formulation and chemistry claims currently occupy more of the field than mechanical rinsing hardware alone.
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 Sprayer Cleaning and Residue Management 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.