Sunscreen Safety Patents: Top Companies & Filing Trends 2026
Sunscreen Safety and Environmental Profile Patents
Concentrated at the top. The top 5 assignees hold 68.5% of all 146 records in scope, and the top 10 hold 86.3% — a short list controls most of the filed claim space. Filings sat near zero in 2017, rose to a peak of 10 in 2019, and after a dip climbed again to 10 by 2024 — a +67% increase from 2021's 6 filings. 2025 and 2026 are undercounted because publication typically lags filing by about 18 months; treat the most recent bars as a floor, not a ceiling.
- 1PROCTER & GAMBLE CO56
- 2BASF SE16
- 3SYMRISE GMBH & CO KG10
- 4HERCULES INC10
- 5AIRBUS OPERATIONS LTD8
See the full sunscreen safety and environmental profile 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
How concentrated is patent ownership in sunscreen safety and environmental profile technology?
It is highly concentrated at the top. The top 5 assignees hold 68.5% of all 146 records in scope, and the top 10 hold 86.3%, out of a ranked list of 42 companies total. Beyond the top 10, most remaining assignees hold only a single filing, so the field behaves as a leader-and-long-tail structure rather than a broad, evenly distributed one.
Is filing activity in this area growing or slowing down?
Filing activity grew from 6 filings in 2021 to 10 in 2024, a +67% increase over that three-year span, with 2019 as the single peak year at 10 filings. Because publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, the lower counts shown for 2025 and 2026 are incomplete rather than evidence of a slowdown — later years typically fill in as more applications publish.
What kind of technology actually shows up in these patents — is it mostly sunscreen formulations?
Not exclusively. Detergent and cleaning-composition claims (IPC class C11D) appear in 39.0% of the 146 records and bleaching/dry-cleaning claims (D06L) in 31.5%, both ahead of medicinal-preparation claims (A61K) at 12.3%. This means a large share of the documented activity involves surfactant, textile-treatment and testing chemistry built around UV filters, not skin-applied sunscreen formulation 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 Sunscreen Safety and Environmental Profile 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.