Synchrotron X-Ray Methods Patents: Who Leads, Where the Gaps Are 2026
- 45.8% of all filings sit with five assignees. 479 of the 1,046 records in scope belong to the top five, so most of the crowded claim territory is already staked out by a small group.
- Filing has cooled from its 2017 peak. The trend ran from 42 records in 2017 down through the mid-2020s; the 2021-to-2024 span shows a -27% move, a signal to weigh against the 18-month publication lag.
- Material analysis dominates the IPC mix, but not alone. G01N carries 36.9% of records while C07K, A61K and C12N each clear 11%+, meaning biological and pharmaceutical applications ride alongside the core instrumentation claims.
Filing growth compares 2021 (26 records) with 2024 (19) — 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 1,046 records in scope (CR5), not by the ranked leaders only.
What this landscape covers
Synchrotron X-ray methods sit at the intersection of beamline instrumentation and the downstream applications that depend on tunable, high-flux radiation: protein crystallography, microfluidic sample handling, lithography and diagnostic imaging. The 1,046 records in scope span filings built around energy tunability, beam-time access, sample environment control, data volume management, radiation damage mitigation and user support — the operational concerns that separate a working beamline claim from a purely theoretical one. Patent families, not raw document counts, are the fairer unit here because they strip out the effect of continuations and multi-jurisdiction refiling.
The receiving-office spread points to the United States and Europe as the primary filing venues, with a meaningful share routed through the PCT system before national phase decisions are made. That pattern is typical of instrumentation-heavy fields where applicants want optionality before committing to costly national filings.
Filing trend and technology composition
Two views of the same 1,046 records: how filing volume has moved year over year, and how the underlying technology splits across IPC subclasses.
Filing trend, 2017 peak to present
Filings peaked at 42 records in 2017. The 2021-to-2024 window, the most recent span that can be read as complete, shows a -27% move from 26 to 19 records. Years after 2024 are still filling in under the roughly 18-month publication lag and should not be read as a continued decline.
Technology composition by IPC subclass
G01N (material analysis & testing) leads at 36.9% of the 1,046 records. C07K (peptides & proteins), A61K (medicinal preparations) and C12N (microorganisms & genetic engineering) each carry double-digit shares, and G21K (particle & radiation handling) and H01J (electron & discharge tubes) mark the instrumentation core. Because a single record can carry several IPC classes, these shares sum to more than 100% of the record total.
Shares are the percentage of the 1,046 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
Go deeper on Synchrotron X-Ray Methods with Eureka
This page is one run against one query. Ask Eureka your own question about synchrotron x-ray methods and every answer comes back with the patent numbers behind it.
Try EurekaRepresentative filing and most-cited records
Variable-period undulators for synchrotron radiation (US6858998B1)
A new and improved undulator design is provided that enables a variable period length for the production of synchrotron radiation from both medium-energy and high-energy storage rings. The variable period length is achieved using a staggered array of pole pieces made up of high permeability material, permanent magnet material, or an electromagnetic structure. The pole pieces are separated by a variable width space. The sum of the variable width space and the pole width would therefore define the period of the undulator. Features and advantages of the invention include broad photon energy tunability, constant power operation and constant brilliance operation.Filed by the United States Department of Energy, this record ties the physical undulator design directly to the energy-tunability requirement that runs through much of this landscape.
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | US6409832B2 | Protein crystallization in microfluidic structures | 662 |
| 2 | US5812629A | Ultrahigh resolution interferometric x-ray imaging | 596 |
| 3 | US5190637A | Formation of microstructures by multiple level deep X-ray lithography with sacrificial metal layers | 502 |
| 4 | US5629524A | High speed crystallography detector | 347 |
| 5 | US20010027745A1 | Protein crystallization in microfluidic structures | 250 |
| 6 | WO2013181170A1 | Method for accurate sequencing of DNA | 199 |
| 7 | US20150275289A1 | Method for Accurate Sequencing of DNA | 183 |
| 8 | US5339347A | Method for microbeam radiation therapy | 165 |
| 9 | US20080273662A1 | CD-GISAXS System and Method | 145 |
| 10 | US6067859A | Optical stretcher | 142 |
Citation counts reward older filings simply because they have had longer to accumulate references — read them as a signal of influence within this corpus, not of current commercial relevance.
Each row carries its publication number; clicking a row searches Eureka by that number.
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Browse MCP servers →What the numbers say about this field
Three figures worth weighing before deciding where to file or who to watch.
The field is top-heavy
Five assignees account for 479 of the 1,046 records in scope, and the top ten stretch that to 61.2%. A newcomer filing broad instrumentation claims is filing into ground already covered by a small set of established players.
Volume has eased from its peak
From a 2017 high of 42 records, filing activity moved from 26 records in 2021 to 19 in 2024. That is a real three-year decline, though the most recent one or two years are still being filled in by publication lag and should not be added to the trend yet.
Instrumentation sits under biology
Material analysis and testing (G01N) is the single largest class, but peptide, medicinal and microorganism classes (C07K, A61K, C12N) each carry substantial shares. The technology reads as much as a life-sciences enabling tool as a pure physics instrument.
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to synchrotron x-ray methods, with the prior art for and against each one.
Who holds the ground, and where it opens up
The ranked leaders hold a disproportionate share of filings, and several appear together on the same families — a sign of long-running institutional collaboration rather than isolated filing.
A single clear leader
The top-ranked assignee holds 129 records, well ahead of the fifth-place holder at 44 and tenth place at 25 — a steep drop-off that marks this as a leader-plus-cluster field rather than an evenly split one.
Dense co-filing among the top group
The strongest co-assignee pairs each share 113 records, and the same three institutions appear across all of the strongest pairings — a tight collaborative cluster rather than scattered joint ventures.
Momentum has stalled at the top
Every one of the leading assignees shows zero records in the latest year on record. Given the roughly 18-month publication lag, this reads as pipeline still filling rather than confirmed inactivity, but it means recent competitive signal from these names is currently thin.
| Assignee | Recent year | YoY |
|---|---|---|
| The Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University | 0 | — |
| Vrije Universiteit Brussel | 0 | — |
| Vlaams Interuniversitair Instituut voor Biotechnologie (VIB) | 0 | — |
| Sumitomo Rubber Industries, Ltd. | 0 | — |
| Yeda Research and Development Co. Ltd. | 0 | — |
| Board of Regents of the University of Texas System | 0 | — |
| The Scripps Research Institute | 0 | — |
| The Regents of the University of California | 0 | — |
Where to take this analysis
The dataset points to a concentrated core and several lighter-filed adjacent branches. Two directions follow from that.
Map claim boundaries before filing
With 45.8% of records held by five assignees, a freedom-to-operate check against the leader's family and the strongest co-assignee cluster is a reasonable first step before drafting new instrumentation claims.
Explore claim mapping in EurekaWatch the under-claimed branches
Data volume handling, sample environment control and user support workflows carry lighter filing density than the core G01N and C07K classes, leaving room for narrower, defensible claims.
Run a white space search in EurekaCommon questions on synchrotron X-ray method patents
The ranked leader in this dataset holds 129 records, considerably ahead of the fifth-place assignee at 44 and tenth place at 25. The top five combined account for 45.8% of all 1,046 records in scope, and the top ten reach 61.2%. This is a leader-plus-cluster structure rather than an evenly distributed field, so due diligence should weight the leading names heavily but not ignore the long tail below tenth place.
Filing peaked at 42 records in 2017 and the 2021-to-2024 span, the most recent period that can be read as complete, shows a -27% move from 26 to 19 records. Years from 2025 onward are still incomplete because publication typically lags filing by about 18 months, so they should not yet be read as continuing the decline. Overall the honest read is a field that has cooled from its 2017 peak, with the very latest trend still unresolved.
The largest IPC class is G01N, material analysis and testing, covering 36.9% of the 1,046 records. Substantial shares also fall under C07K (peptides and proteins, 19.1%), A61K (medicinal preparations, 16.1%) and C12N (microorganisms and genetic engineering, 11.6%), with G21K and H01J representing the core radiation-handling and electron-tube instrumentation. Because records often carry multiple IPC codes, these percentages sum to more than 100% of the record total, which is expected given how classification works.
Relative to the dense core of material analysis and biological-application claims, sub-areas such as data volume handling, in-situ sample environment control, beam-time scheduling and user-support workflow tooling show lighter filing density. These are process- and operations-adjacent to the core physics and are less likely to run into the concentrated ownership held by the leading assignees. A narrowly drafted claim in one of these areas has a better chance of avoiding the crowded instrumentation core.
US6858998B1 claims a variable-period undulator design that produces synchrotron radiation with broad photon energy tunability and constant power and brilliance operation, using a staggered array of pole pieces separated by a variable-width space. It is held by the United States Department of Energy. Anyone designing tunable undulator hardware for medium- or high-energy storage rings should check their pole-piece geometry and spacing mechanism against this claim family before finalising a design.
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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.
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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.