Fastest
Eureka on the web
When you want the answer in the next five minutes.
The agent works the prompt against patents and technical literature, citing every source.
Run your analysis now →https://www.patsnap.com/resources/blog/rd-blog/stirred-tank-bioreactor-gas-transfer-patent-landscape/ · Patsnap · data cut-off 2026-07-31 · downloaded from the live page
Patent Landscape · BioprocessingStirred-Tank Bioreactor Gas Transfer Patents: Who Leads and Where the Claim Space Is Open
- One assignee at 34 records sits well clear of a field where fifth place holds 8 and tenth place holds just 5 — a steep drop after the leader.
- Mixing and microbial classes dominate the overlap B01F stirring apparatus (26.2%) and C12N microorganism work (20.6%) are the two most common companions to the core C12M bioreactor class.
- Filing has already passed its visible peak activity crested at 7 records in 2020; the 2025-2026 counts are understated because publication lags filing by roughly 18 months.
107
Published Records
US
Leading Jurisdiction
53
Active Filers Ranked
2020
Peak Filing Year
Published byPatsnap Research··7 min readSourced from Patsnap Eureka
Field Overview
What this patent set covers
This landscape covers 107 published records filed against gas-transfer mechanics inside stirred-tank and agitated bioreactors: gas holdup, bubble diameter, superficial velocity, oxygen gradients, transfer coefficients and exhaust-gas handling, all cross-referenced against C12M bioreactor apparatus, B01F mixing equipment and C12M3/00 culture vessel classes. The scope sits at the intersection of mechanical engineering and cell-culture process control, where a bioreactor's agitation and sparging design determines how much dissolved oxygen actually reaches the culture.
The 53 ranked assignees span industrial bioprocess equipment makers, pharmaceutical manufacturers and at least one university lab, reflecting a field that sits between hardware supply and in-house process engineering. Filing has been filed most heavily into the United States, with the WIPO PCT route and European filings also carrying meaningful volume, pointing to companies protecting the same mechanical inventions across multiple jurisdictions rather than filing purely domestically.
Filing activity and technology composition, 2017-2026
Source: Patsnap Eureka. Assignee ranking and totals. Derived from a Patsnap search on Stirred-Tank Bioreactor Gas Transfer covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-07-31. Counts reflect published records only and shift as new filings publish.Run this in Eureka MCP
Let an AI agent run this analysis on your own technology
Pick a task. Every answer cites the patents behind it.
10,000 free credits to start
The Numbers
Filing trend and technology composition
Two views of the same 107-record dataset: how filing has moved year over year, and which IPC classes the records fall into.
Filing trend, 2017-2026
Recorded filings ran from 6 in 2017 to a peak of 7 in 2020, with 2026 showing 0 as a partial year. Because publication typically lags filing by around 18 months, the most recent two to three years understate real filing activity and should not be read as a decline.
IPC subclass composition
Every record carries the core C12M bioreactor class by construction of the search. Beyond that, B01F mixing and stirring apparatus appears in 26.2% of the 107 records and C12N microorganism/genetic-engineering work in 20.6%, showing that gas-transfer claims are most often paired with mechanical agitation detail or with the biological process they support, rather than filed as a standalone measurement technique.
Shares are the percentage of the 107 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
Source: Patsnap Eureka. Filing trend and technology composition. Derived from a Patsnap search on Stirred-Tank Bioreactor Gas Transfer covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-07-31. Counts reflect published records only and shift as new filings publish.
Go deeper on Stirred-Tank Bioreactor Gas Transfer with Eureka
This page is one run against one query. Ask Eureka your own question about stirred-tank bioreactor gas transfer and every answer comes back with the patent numbers behind it.
Try EurekaPrior Art To Know
Most-cited records in this space
Representative Filing
Bioreactor With Higher Agitation Rates (US20180010082A1)
LONZA LTD
A single-use bioreactor with a bioprocess container, shell, agitator, sparger, gas filter inlet ports for the sparger and headspace overlay, plus fill, harvest and sample ports and a probe, together with a controller that monitors and controls operating parameters. The filing also covers a method for cultivating and propagating mammalian cells that transfers culture medium between single-use bioreactors under controlled conditions.Filed by Lonza Ltd, published 2018-01-11.
Highest-citation records
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | US7384783B2 | Stirred-tank reactor system | 292 |
| 2 | US20050239199A1 | Stirred-tank reactor system | 253 |
| 3 | US20060199260A1 | Microbioreactor for continuous cell culture | 252 |
| 4 | US20050089993A1 | Apparatus and methods for simultaneous operation of miniaturized reactors | 213 |
| 5 | US20040077075A1 | Microfermentors for rapid screening and analysis of biochemical processes | 168 |
| 6 | US20180010082A1 | Bioreactor With Higher Agitation Rates | 79 |
| 7 | WO2014037862A1 | Devices and methods for culture of cells | 54 |
| 8 | US7507579B2 | Apparatus and methods for simultaneous operation of miniaturized reactors | 53 |
| 9 | US7901934B2 | Probe connector assembly and method of use | 52 |
| 10 | WO2005104706A2 | Stirred-tank reactor system | 52 |
Citation counts inside this corpus favour older filings that have had more time to accumulate citations; treat them as a signal of influence on later filings, not as a measure of current commercial relevance.
Each row carries its publication number; clicking a row searches Eureka by that number.
Source: Patsnap Eureka. Citation counts and representative records. Derived from a Patsnap search on Stirred-Tank Bioreactor Gas Transfer covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-07-31. Counts reflect published records only and shift as new filings publish.Run this in Eureka MCP
Run it yourself
Put your own technology through the same analysis
Where to run it
For builders
MCP server & REST API
When it has to run inside your own pipeline.
Patent search, landscape analysis and assignee resolution as MCP tools. Drop them into any agent framework, or call REST directly.
Browse MCP servers →Reading The Data
What the filing pattern tells you
Three findings that change where you look next, drawn directly from the record and citation data above.
Concentration
34 vs 8
leader vs fifth place
One assignee, then a steep drop
The leading assignee holds 34 records against a fifth-place count of just 8 and a tenth-place count of 5. That gap suggests one organisation has built a broad portfolio around gas-transfer mechanics while the rest of the field files in smaller, more targeted clusters.
53 ranked assignees in total
Technology overlap
26.2%
of 107 records also in B01F
Mixing hardware is the dominant companion class
Just over a quarter of records pair core bioreactor claims with mixing and stirring apparatus detail (B01F), more than any other secondary class. That points to gas transfer being claimed as part of an impeller or sparger design rather than as an isolated sensing or control method.
C12N microorganism claims follow at 20.6%
Filing cadence
7 in 2020
peak year on record
Activity peaked in 2020, not the most recent year
2020 is the highest single year recorded so far, at 7 filings. Later years trail off in the raw count, but with roughly an 18-month gap between filing and publication, 2025 and 2026 figures are not yet a reliable read on current activity.
Data cut-off: 2026-07-31
Citation influence
292 citations
top record in corpus
Early stirred-tank system patents still anchor the field
The most-cited record in this set, a stirred-tank reactor system patent, carries 292 citations, with several other early-2000s microbioreactor and microfermentor filings close behind. New filers should expect freedom-to-operate work in this space to trace back through these foundational documents.
Top five citation counts range 168-292
Eureka AI Agent
Looking for what nobody has claimed yet?
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to stirred-tank bioreactor gas transfer, with the prior art for and against each one.
Source: Patsnap Eureka. Co-assignee relationships and derived observations. Derived from a Patsnap search on Stirred-Tank Bioreactor Gas Transfer covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-07-31. Counts reflect published records only and shift as new filings publish.Run this in Eureka MCP
Who's Filing
The assignee landscape
53 companies and institutions are ranked in this dataset, spanning bioprocess equipment suppliers, large-molecule manufacturers and academic labs. The field has one clear leader by volume, then a long tail of assignees filing single-digit counts each.
Leader
34 records
top-ranked assignee
A broad, sustained portfolio
The top-ranked assignee's count of 34 records is well ahead of the rest of the ranking, consistent with a company that treats gas-transfer engineering as core IP rather than an incidental claim inside a broader cell-culture patent.
Ranked #1 of 53
Mid-field
8 records
fifth-ranked assignee
A cluster of active but narrower filers
Fifth place sits at 8 records, and tenth place at 5 — a field of established equipment and pharma names filing steadily but without the leader's breadth. Co-assignee pairings among some of these names suggest joint development rather than pure competition.
10 documented co-assignee pairs
Momentum
0 in latest year
across tracked leaders
Recent-year activity has gone quiet across the board
Every one of the assignees tracked for recent-year momentum shows 0 filings in the latest year on record. Given the roughly 18-month publication lag, this reads as a reporting gap rather than a genuine stop in R&D, but it means the newest strategic moves are not yet visible in this data.
Recheck this ranking after the next data refresh
Recent-year filing momentum by assignee
| Assignee | Recent year | YoY |
|---|---|---|
| Pluri Biotech Ltd | 0 | — |
| Baxter International Inc | 0 | — |
| Baxter Healthcare SA | 0 | — |
| HyClone Laboratories Inc | 0 | — |
| Massachusetts Institute of Technology | 0 | — |
| Finesse Solutions Inc | 0 | — |
| ZHANG ZHIYU | 0 | — |
| JENSEN KLAVS F | 0 | — |
Source: Patsnap Eureka. Assignee-level momentum. Derived from a Patsnap search on Stirred-Tank Bioreactor Gas Transfer covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-07-31. Counts reflect published records only and shift as new filings publish.Run this in Eureka MCP
Next Steps
Where to take this analysis
The dataset points to a concentrated leader, a mechanically-driven secondary class, and several under-filed branches. Here's how to act on each.
Map the leader's claim boundaries
With 34 records against a fifth-place count of 8, the top assignee's portfolio is worth a claim-by-claim read before designing agitator or sparger geometry that might sit inside their scope.
Explore assignee portfolios in EurekaCheck the under-claimed branches
Bubble-imaging feedback and single-use sparger integration show comparatively thin claim density in this dataset. A first-filer advantage may still be available in these specific mechanical combinations.
Run a white-space search in EurekaTrace the citation backbone
The top five most-cited records anchor most of the field's downstream filings. Any freedom-to-operate opinion in this space should trace claims back through these before clearing a new design.
Pull full citation trees in EurekaSource: Patsnap Eureka. Forward-looking reading of the same dataset. Derived from a Patsnap search on Stirred-Tank Bioreactor Gas Transfer covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-07-31. Counts reflect published records only and shift as new filings publish.Run this in Eureka MCP
Questions
Frequently asked questions
In this dataset of 107 published records, one assignee leads clearly with 34 records, well ahead of the fifth-ranked assignee at 8 and the tenth-ranked at 5. The ranking covers 53 assignees in total, so most companies in the field hold only a handful of records each. This concentration at the top suggests one organisation has built gas-transfer engineering into a core, sustained patent programme rather than filing opportunistically.
B01F, covering mixing and stirring apparatus, appears in 26.2% of the 107 records and is the most common secondary class, followed by C12N microorganism and genetic-engineering claims at 20.6%. A61K medicinal preparations, B01L lab apparatus, G01N testing and C12Q enzyme/DNA measurement all appear in smaller but non-trivial shares. Searching across these classes together, rather than C12M alone, catches filings where gas-transfer claims are embedded inside a mixing mechanism or a downstream biological process.
The highest recorded year so far is 2020, with 7 filings, and counts in 2025 and 2026 appear lower. That drop should be read cautiously: publication typically lags filing by around 18 months, so the last one to two years in any patent dataset are understated by definition. A genuine slowdown can't be confirmed until later filing years finish publishing.
US20180010082A1, assigned to Lonza Ltd and published 2018-01-11, covers a single-use bioreactor with a bioprocess container, shell, agitator, sparger, gas filter inlet ports and a set of fill, harvest and sample ports, along with a monitoring and control system. It also claims a method for cultivating mammalian cells that transfers culture medium between single-use bioreactors under controlled conditions. Anyone designing single-use bioreactor hardware with a similar sparger and gas-filter port arrangement should review this filing's claim scope directly rather than relying on the abstract alone.
The technology composition data shows dense overlap between core bioreactor claims (C12M) and mixing apparatus (B01F) or microorganism work (C12N), but comparatively thin representation in areas like real-time bubble-imaging feedback loops and single-use sparger/gas-filter integration. These narrower mechanical-plus-control combinations show up less often across the 107 records than the broader mixing and biological classes. That gap is worth a dedicated freedom-to-operate search before assuming the space is clear, since low visibility in this dataset doesn't guarantee no prior art exists elsewhere.
Answers are grounded in the same dataset. Derived from a Patsnap search on Stirred-Tank Bioreactor Gas Transfer covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-07-31. Counts reflect published records only and shift as new filings publish.Run this in Eureka MCP
Research Stirred-Tank Bioreactor Gas Transfer in depth with Eureka
Go past this page: query the whole stirred-tank bioreactor gas transfer corpus yourself, in your own scope.
Every answer comes back with patent numbers you can open.
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.
Nothing on this page constitutes an exhaustive prior-art, novelty, freedom-to-operate, or validity search, nor does it constitute legal, financial, investment, or professional advice, and it should not be relied upon as such. Any patent, commercial, or strategic decision should be verified independently and reviewed with qualified patent, legal, and domain professionals. Patsnap makes no warranties, express or implied, as to the accuracy, completeness, or fitness for any particular purpose of the information presented.
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.