Tooth Whitening Patents: Who Leads, Where the Gaps Are 2026
- Filing is concentrated at the top. The five leading assignees hold 55.6% of all 4,341 records in scope, and the ten leading hold 63.8% — a small group controls most of the claim space.
- Growth has cooled since the 2020 peak. Filings peaked at 264 in 2020 and fell -44% from 159 in 2021 to 89 in 2024, the last year with complete publication data.
- The core citations are two decades old. The most-cited records are delivery-strip patents from the late 1990s, meaning new filers are designing around foundational claims, not writing on a blank page.
Filing growth compares 2021 (159 records) with 2024 (89) — 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 4,341 records in scope (CR5), not by the ranked leaders only.
What the dataset covers
This landscape draws on 4,341 published patent families matching tooth whitening and dental bleaching claims alongside peroxide concentration, stain removal, shade measurement, enamel sensitivity, delivery-strip, or light-activation terms, filed between 2015 and mid-2026. Records span consumer strip and gel products, professional in-office bleaching systems, and the sensors and light sources used to activate or measure the process. Because publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, the final one to two years in any trend chart will understate real filing activity.
The technology sits at the intersection of formulation chemistry, dental devices and consumer packaged goods, which shows up in the IPC mix: medicinal-preparation and cosmetics-use classes dominate, but dentistry, brush hardware, detergent chemistry and even confectionery and electrotherapy classes each carry a meaningful share of records.
Filing trend and technology composition
Two views of the same 4,341-record dataset: filings by year, and the IPC subclasses those filings carry.
Filings rose to a 2020 peak, then declined
Filings climbed from 144 in 2017 to a peak of 264 in 2020, then fell from 159 in 2021 to 89 in 2024 — a -44% decline over that span, the most recent period the data can support without the publication-lag distortion of 2025-2026.
Medicinal and cosmetic classes dominate the mix
A61K (medicinal preparations) appears on 71.3% of the 4,341 records and A61Q (cosmetics use) on 62.1%, reflecting the formulation-heavy core of the field. Dentistry hardware (A61C, 23.5%), brushes (A46B, 9.3%), detergent chemistry (C11D, 5.7%), therapeutic activity (A61P, 4.2%), confectionery (A23G, 3.5%) and electrotherapy/radiation (A61N, 3.1%) each cover smaller but distinct slices, since a single record can carry several classes.
Shares are the percentage of the 4,341 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
Go deeper on Tooth Whitening Technologies with Eureka
This page is one run against one query. Ask Eureka your own question about tooth whitening technologies and every answer comes back with the patent numbers behind it.
Try EurekaThe claims everyone designs around
Tooth whitening film, process of manufacturing thereof and a method of using such a film
The filing covers a tooth whitening film combining a bleaching agent — either a non-hydrogen-peroxide agent or hydrogen peroxide held in a hydrogen peroxide-polymer complex — with cyclic polyphosphates, film-forming polymers, plasticizers and emulsifiers, at a film thickness of roughly 50 to 500 micrometres. It also claims a kit pairing a thinner film (50-150 micrometres) with a dental aligner, plus the manufacturing process itself.Filed by Bsolve Limited, published 2022-07-21.
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | US5891453A | Delivery system for a tooth whitener using a strip of material having low flexural stiffness | 543 |
| 2 | US20080255498A1 | Sensitizer Solutions, Systems, and Methods of Use | 501 |
| 3 | US5879691A | Delivery system for a tooth whitener using a strip of material having low flexural stiffness | 496 |
| 4 | US5989569A | Delivery system for a tooth whitener using a permanently deformable strip of material | 410 |
| 5 | US6045811A | Delivery system for an oral care substance using a permanently deformable strip of material | 409 |
| 6 | US5894017A | Delivery system for an oral care substance using a strip of material having low flexural stiffness | 406 |
| 7 | US6685916B1 | Compositions for removing stains from dental surfaces, and methods of making and using the same | 338 |
| 8 | US20060026784A1 | Oral care implement | 311 |
| 9 | US5032178A | Dental composition system and method for bleaching teeth | 300 |
| 10 | US6343933B1 | Light-activated tooth whitening composition and method of using same | 290 |
Citation counts favour older records simply because they have had more time to accumulate citations within the searched corpus — treat this as a measure of influence on the field, not of current commercial relevance.
Each row carries its publication number; clicking a row searches Eureka by that number.
Put your own technology through the same analysis
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 →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 →What the numbers mean for a filing decision
Three patterns worth acting on before drafting new claims in this space.
The top of the field is crowded, the rest is a long tail
With the five leading assignees holding 55.6% of all records and the ten leading holding 63.8%, most of the remaining 90+ ranked companies hold only a handful of families each. New entrants are more likely to find room outside the core delivery-strip and gel formulation claims than inside them.
Growth peaked in 2020 and has not returned
Filings peaked at 264 in 2020 before declining to 89 by 2024, and recent-year filings from several of the largest historical assignees have dropped toward zero. That does not mean the technology is exhausted — it means the easy formulation claims are largely staked out.
The foundational claims are delivery-strip patents from the 1990s
The most-cited records in the dataset are late-1990s delivery-strip filings for low-flexural-stiffness whitening strips, still the reference point that later filings must distinguish from. Any new strip or film format needs a clear structural or chemical difference from this lineage to clear freedom-to-operate review.
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to tooth whitening technologies, with the prior art for and against each one.
Who holds the claim space, and where it is thinning
A small group of consumer-goods and chemical companies built the core patent estate; recent filing momentum from that same group has slowed sharply.
One company holds a scale no other assignee matches
The leading assignee's family count is more than double the fifth-place holder's 88, putting a single company's estate well ahead of every peer in the ranking.
A tight cluster holds the next tier of the estate
Fifth place sits at 88 records and tenth at 55, a narrower gap than the drop from first to fifth — the mid-tier assignees are closer in scale to each other than to the leader.
The largest historical filers have gone quiet recently
Several of the assignees with the deepest historical estates show filings dropping to zero or near-zero in the latest year, consistent with the broader -44% filing decline from 2021 to 2024 rather than a company-specific pullback.
| Assignee | Recent year | YoY |
|---|---|---|
| Procter & Gamble Co | 3 | -75% |
| Colgate-Palmolive Co | 0 | -100% |
| E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Co | 0 | — |
| Unilever Global IP Ltd | 0 | -100% |
| Koninklijke Philips N.V. | 0 | — |
| Corium International, Inc. | 0 | — |
| Cadbury Adams USA LLC | 0 | — |
| A.V. Topchiev Institute of Petrochemical Synthesis, Russian Academy of Sciences | 0 | — |
Where to take this next
The dataset points to specific next steps depending on whether you are clearing a filing or scouting a gap.
Run a freedom-to-operate check against the delivery-strip core
Before drafting new strip or film claims, check structural and chemical distinctions against the 1990s delivery-strip lineage that anchors the most-cited records in this field.
Explore prior art in EurekaMap the under-claimed branches against your formulation
Shade-measurement, light-activation and enamel-sensitivity sub-areas carry lower record density than the core A61K/A61Q formulation space — worth a closer look if your work sits there.
Run a white space search in EurekaCommon questions about tooth whitening patents
The assignee ranking in this dataset is led by a single company with 1,207 records, more than double the fifth-place holder's 88. The top five assignees combined hold 55.6% of all 4,341 records in scope, and the top ten hold 63.8%. This concentration means most freedom-to-operate risk in the field traces back to a small number of estates rather than being spread evenly across the 100 companies in the ranking.
Filing activity peaked at 264 records in 2020 and has declined since, falling from 159 in 2021 to 89 in 2024, a -44% drop over that span. 2024 is the most recent year with reasonably complete publication data; 2025 and 2026 figures will rise as those filings publish, since publication typically lags filing by about 18 months. Read the recent decline as the current, complete picture rather than as a mid-collapse trend.
The most-cited records in this dataset are delivery-strip patents from the late 1990s covering whitening strips made from low-flexural-stiffness or permanently deformable material, with citation counts running as high as 543. These filings remain the reference point that later strip and film patents, including more recent ones, need to distinguish from on structure or chemistry. A companion record on sensitizer solutions for enamel sensitivity also carries substantial citations, indicating that sensitivity management is a parallel area of sustained interest.
The IPC composition data shows dentistry hardware, brush technology, detergent chemistry, confectionery formats and electrotherapy/radiation classes each cover a smaller share of the 4,341 records than the dominant medicinal-preparation and cosmetics-use classes. That gap suggests sub-areas such as shade-measurement calibration, light-activation tuning and enamel-sensitivity additives carry fewer entrenched claims relative to core bleaching-agent formulation. A first claim there would likely combine a specific sensor or wavelength mechanism with a whitening delivery format rather than claiming a new bleaching chemistry outright.
With the top five assignees holding 55.6% of all 4,341 records and the top ten holding 63.8%, this field shows meaningful concentration at the top alongside a long tail — the ranking includes 100 companies, and most of them hold only a handful of families each. This pattern is typical of a mature consumer-formulation category where a few large companies built foundational IP early and smaller entrants file narrower, defensive or improvement claims around the edges.
Research Tooth Whitening Technologies in depth with Eureka
Go past this page: query the whole tooth whitening technologies 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.