Sunscreen Safety Patents: Top Companies & Filing Trends 2026
- 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.
- Filing is still climbing. From 2021 to 2024, the last fully comparable years, filings rose from 6 to 10 — a +67% increase over that three-year span.
- Cleaning-chemistry classes dominate. C11D (detergents & cleaning) and D06L (bleaching & dry-cleaning) each cover well over a third of the 146 records, ahead of medicinal-preparation filings.
Filing growth compares 2021 (6 records) with 2024 (10) — 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 146 records in scope (CR5), not by the ranked leaders only.
What this landscape covers
This dataset tracks patent activity where sunscreen safety claims intersect with environmental fate and toxicity evidence — UV filter toxicity, coral bleaching, aquatic toxicity, dermal absorption studies, endocrine concern, regulatory review and reformulation cost. It captures 146 published records filed between 2015 and 2026, spanning both cosmetic-formulation applicants and adjacent industrial chemistry filers whose compositions and test methods overlap this space.
The mix is broader than pure cosmetics. Detergent and textile-treatment classes carry a large share of the records alongside medicinal-preparation and material-testing classes, which signals that filers are patenting the surfactant, testing and cleaning-chemistry infrastructure around UV filters as much as the filters themselves.
Filing trend and technology composition
Two views of the same 146 records: how filing activity has moved year over year, and which IPC subclasses carry the claim density.
Filing trend, 2017–2026
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.
Technology composition by IPC subclass
C11D (detergents & cleaning) leads at 39.0% of the 146 records, followed by D06L (bleaching & dry-cleaning) at 31.5%. Because a single record can carry multiple IPC classes, these shares are each measured against the same 146-record base and add up to more than 100% — they describe overlap, not a partition of the field.
Shares are the percentage of the 146 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
Go deeper on Sunscreen Safety and Environmental Profile with Eureka
This page is one run against one query. Ask Eureka your own question about sunscreen safety and environmental profile and every answer comes back with the patent numbers behind it.
Try EurekaRepresentative filing and most-cited records
UV filter compositions and methods of preparation and use thereof
Disclosed herein are ultraviolet (UV) filter compositions and methods relating to their preparation and use. The compositions and related method of preparation may include combining at least one or at least two UV filters with at least one other ingredient, wherein each of the UV filters is selected to have an overall environmental hazard score of 1.5 to 7.0, and determining an ecotoxicological value of the composition, wherein the ecotoxicological value ranges from 0 to 350.Filed by BASF SE, published 2021-07-29 as US20210231644A1.
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | US20030004965A1 | Hazard communication system | 122 |
| 2 | US7171426B2 | Hazard communication system | 56 |
| 3 | US20030046963A1 | Selective laundry process using water | 50 |
| 4 | US8148315B2 | Method for uniform deposition of fabric care actives in a non-aqueous fabric treatment system | 46 |
| 5 | US20220324737A1 | Methods for monitoring marine waterbody sustainability at discharge sites | 38 |
| 6 | US20050000028A1 | Method for uniform deposition of fabric care actives in a non-aqueous fabric treatment system | 24 |
| 7 | WO2018036625A1 | A preservative mixture | 21 |
| 8 | US20110246397A1 | Method for improving the environmental impact of formulated products | 19 |
| 9 | US20050003981A1 | Fabric care composition and method for using same | 14 |
| 10 | US20130142717A1 | Offshore gas separation process | 13 |
Citation counts favour older filings simply because they have had more time to accumulate citations inside this corpus — read them as a signal of influence on the field, not of current commercial relevance.
Each row carries its publication number; clicking a row searches Eureka by that number.
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Three readings of the same 146-record set, focused on where claim space is occupied and where activity is still building.
A short list controls most of the field
The top 5 assignees account for 68.5% of all 146 records in scope, and the top 10 extend that to 86.3%. With a ranked list of only 42 companies total, most of the remaining assignees hold a single filing each — a long tail rather than a second tier of scale filers.
Activity is still building, not plateauing
Filings rose from 6 in 2021 to 10 in 2024, a +67% increase over that span, and 2019 remains the single peak year at 10 filings. Because publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, the apparent slowdown in 2025–2026 reflects incomplete data rather than a real drop in activity.
Cleaning chemistry outweighs pure cosmetic claims
C11D (detergents & cleaning) and D06L (bleaching & dry-cleaning) each cover a larger share of the 146 records than A61K (medicinal preparations) at 12.3%, meaning much of the documented activity sits in surfactant and textile-treatment chemistry rather than skin-applied formulation alone.
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to sunscreen safety and environmental profile, with the prior art for and against each one.
Who is filing, and where the gaps sit
Filing activity concentrates among a small number of assignees, with co-filing patterns pointing to a handful of tight collaboration pairs rather than a broad network.
One filer sets the pace
The leading assignee holds 56 of the 146 records in scope, well ahead of fifth place at 8 and tenth place at 5 — a steep drop-off that marks this as a leader-and-long-tail field rather than an evenly matched one.
A thin second tier
Fifth place holds 8 records and tenth place holds 5, meaning the gap between the leader and the rest of the ranked field is large relative to the spacing within the ranked field itself.
Co-filing is narrow and personal
Only 10 co-assignee pairs appear across the dataset, and the strongest pairs repeat the same individual names rather than linking large corporate filers — collaboration here looks more like internal inventor teams than cross-company alliances.
| Assignee | Recent year | YoY |
|---|---|---|
| BASF SE | 1 | 0% |
| Procter & Gamble Co | 0 | — |
| Symrise GmbH & Co KG | 0 | — |
| BetzDearborn Inc | 0 | — |
| Airbus Operations Ltd | 0 | — |
| Hercules Inc | 0 | — |
| ExxonMobil Technology & Engineering Co | 0 | — |
| SCHEPER WILLIAM MICHAEL | 0 | — |
Where to take this analysis
The patterns above point to specific next steps depending on whether the goal is freedom-to-operate, portfolio benchmarking, or spotting a filing gap.
Check freedom-to-operate against the leader's claims
With one assignee holding 56 of 146 records, any new UV filter or ecotoxicological-scoring composition should be checked against that portfolio's claim scope before formulation work proceeds.
Explore the claims in EurekaMap the under-claimed branches to your roadmap
Aquatic ecotoxicity testing and dermal absorption protocols show thinner claim density than core detergent chemistry — worth a focused search before committing R&D spend there.
Run a white space search in EurekaTrack filings past the 18-month publication lag
2024 is the last fully comparable filing year at 10 filings; treat 2025–2026 counts as provisional and revisit them as later publications land.
Set up monitoring in EurekaCommon questions on this landscape
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.
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.
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.
The most-cited records in this dataset include hazard-communication system patents and fabric-care and laundry-process patents, alongside a marine-waterbody sustainability monitoring application. Citation counts inside a bounded corpus like this one tend to favour older filings simply because they have had more time to accumulate citations, so they should be read as a signal of past influence on the field rather than of current commercial importance.
Sub-areas such as aquatic ecotoxicity threshold testing, endocrine-disruption screening methods, and non-aqueous UV filter delivery systems show thinner documented claim density relative to the core detergent and UV-filter composition classes that dominate the dataset. A focused prior-art search in these specific sub-areas, rather than in the crowded core classes, is more likely to surface genuine open claim space before committing formulation or testing resources.
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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.
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.