Urine Albumin & Kidney Markers Patents: Top Companies 2026
- 58.4% concentration. The top 5 assignees combine for 414 of 709 records in scope — a market where filing space near the leaders is already dense.
- Therapeutic claims dominate diagnostic ones. A61K medicinal-preparation classes cover 75.2% of records versus 17.5% for G01N material analysis, showing this field is driven more by drug co-therapy claims than by assay hardware.
- Growth has flattened, not collapsed. Filings moved from 31 in 2021 to 29 in 2024, a -6% shift over three years, after peaking at 83 in 2019.
Filing growth compares 2021 (31 records) with 2024 (29) — 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 709 records in scope (CR5), not by the ranked leaders only.
What this landscape covers
This landscape covers patent families that combine urine albumin, albumin-creatinine ratio, or kidney injury marker claim language with assay and clinical-use terms such as immunoturbidimetric assay, point of care, reference interval, and standardization program. The scope spans 2015 through the 2026-07-31 cut-off, capturing both the diagnostic assay side of the field and the much larger body of therapeutic patents that cite albuminuria or kidney injury markers as an endpoint or co-therapy target.
Filing activity peaked in 2019 and has since settled into a lower, comparatively stable band. Because publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, the 2025 and 2026 figures in the trend line are still filling in and should not be read as a decline.
Filing trends and technology composition
Two views of the same 709-record set: how filing volume has moved year over year, and which IPC subclasses carry the claim language.
Filing trend: peak in 2019, flattening after 2021
Filings rose from 33 in 2017 to a peak of 83 in 2019, then eased back toward the low-30s range. The 2021-to-2024 span, the most recent window with complete publication data, moved from 31 to 29 filings — a -6% change that indicates a mature but not shrinking filing rate.
IPC composition: therapeutic classes lead by a wide margin
A61K (medicinal preparations) appears in 75.2% of the 709 records and A61P (therapeutic activity) in 55.7%, confirming that most patents in this set are drug or co-therapy claims that use albuminuria or kidney injury markers as a clinical endpoint rather than assay patents in their own right. G01N (material analysis and testing), the class closest to the assay itself, covers 17.5% of records — the clearest single indicator of how much of the field is diagnostic-hardware claim space versus pharmaceutical claim space.
Shares are the percentage of the 709 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
Go deeper on Urine Albumin and Kidney Markers with Eureka
This page is one run against one query. Ask Eureka your own question about urine albumin and kidney markers and every answer comes back with the patent numbers behind it.
Try EurekaRepresentative filing and most-cited records
Methods for the treatment and prevention of renal disorders and fatty liver disorders
The present invention is directed to methods for treating, delaying, slowing the progression of and/or preventing disorders comprising administering to a subject in need thereof a therapeutically effective amount of co-therapy comprising, consisting or consisting essentially of (a) canagliflozin and (b) one or more ACE inhibitors or one or more ARBs or one or more PPAR-gamma agonists; and to methods for treating, delaying, slowing the progression of and/or preventing fatty liver disorders (for example, NASH or NAFLD), comprising administering to a subject in need thereof a therapeutically effective amount of canagliflozin.Filed by Janssen Pharmaceutica NV, published 2018-12-06.
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | US9610272B2 | Methods of reducing the risk of a cardiovascular event in a subject on statin therapy | 150 |
| 2 | WO2014005013A2 | Methods of reducing the risk of a cardiovascular event in a subject on statin therapy | 97 |
| 3 | US20100114064A1 | Mitigation of contrast-induced nephropathy | 97 |
| 4 | US20150157592A1 | Methods of reducing the risk of a cardiovascular event in a subject on statin therapy | 95 |
| 5 | US20180153846A1 | Methods of reducing the risk of a cardiovascular event in a subject on statin therapy | 90 |
| 6 | US20170035722A1 | Methods of reducing the risk of a cardiovascular event in a subject on statin therapy | 90 |
| 7 | US9623001B2 | Methods of reducing the risk of a cardiovascular event in a subject on statin therapy | 86 |
| 8 | US9603826B2 | Methods of reducing the risk of a cardiovascular event in a subject on statin therapy | 85 |
| 9 | US20170258753A1 | Methods of reducing the risk of a cardiovascular event in a subject on statin therapy | 81 |
| 10 | US9693984B2 | Methods of reducing the risk of a cardiovascular event in a subject on statin therapy | 81 |
Citation counts reward older filings that have had more time to accumulate citations within this corpus; treat them as a signal of influence, not of current claim strength.
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 filing pattern signals
Three patterns stand out once the records are grouped by class, assignee and filing office.
Claim space is already crowded near the top
The leading assignee alone accounts for 175 records, and the top 5 combined reach 414 of 709 records in scope. A new entrant filing close to the leaders' core claim language faces a dense prior-art thicket; the more open ground sits further down the ranking or in adjacent, less-claimed IPC branches.
Therapeutic co-claims outnumber assay claims by a wide margin
Only 17.5% of records sit in G01N, the material-analysis class closest to the physical assay. The rest of the field is built around medicinal preparations and therapeutic activity, meaning most patents use urine albumin or kidney injury markers as a clinical trial endpoint rather than as the invention itself.
US filing leads, but the spread is international
The United States receives the largest single share of filings, with Europe and WIPO/PCT routes following. The presence of meaningful filing counts in Australia, Israel and Canada suggests applicants are pursuing multi-jurisdiction protection for therapeutic claims rather than filing narrowly for a single home market.
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to urine albumin and kidney markers, with the prior art for and against each one.
| Assignee | Co-assignee | Shared families |
|---|---|---|
| Akebia Therapeutics Inc | Tanabe Pharma Corp | 19 |
| Amarin Pharmaceuticals Ireland Limited | SONI PARESH | 2 |
| Janssen Pharmaceutica NV | ROSENTHAL NORMAN R | 2 |
Only three co-assignee pairs appear in this dataset, the strongest linking Akebia Therapeutics and Tanabe Pharma across 19 shared records — evidence of a specific joint program rather than a broader pattern of co-filing across the field.
Who is filing, and where the momentum has gone
The assignee ranking covers 100 companies counted across the 709 records in scope. Recent-year momentum for the tracked leaders shows a common pattern rather than an outlier.
A single assignee holds nearly a quarter of the field
The top-ranked assignee's 175 records dwarf the fifth-place count of 40 and the tenth-place count of 17, a steep drop-off that marks this as a leader-and-long-tail field rather than a evenly split one.
Recent-year filing has gone quiet across the tracked leaders
Every one of the six assignees tracked for recent-year momentum, including the two largest, shows zero filings in the latest year, and Tricida shows a -100% year-over-year change. Given the roughly 18-month publication lag, this reads as incomplete recent data rather than an active pullback, but it means the freshest competitive signal comes from 2023-2024 filings, not 2025-2026.
One strong bilateral partnership, otherwise independent filing
Of the three co-assignee pairs identified, the Akebia-Tanabe pairing at 19 shared records stands well above the other two pairs, each at 2 records. Most assignees in this field are filing independently rather than through joint ventures.
| Assignee | Recent year | YoY |
|---|---|---|
| Amarin Pharmaceuticals Ireland Limited | 0 | — |
| Akebia Therapeutics Inc | 0 | — |
| Janssen Pharmaceutica NV | 0 | — |
| Sanofi Aventis Deutschland GmbH | 0 | — |
| Chinook Therapeutics Inc | 0 | — |
| Tricida Inc | 0 | -100% |
| AstraZeneca AB | 0 | -100% |
| Tanabe Pharma Corp | 0 | — |
Where to take this next
The dataset points to specific follow-up questions rather than a single conclusion.
Check the assay-side white space
With G01N at only 17.5% of records against A61K's 75.2%, the physical assay and point-of-care hardware side of this field carries far less claim density than the therapeutic side.
Explore assay claim space →Watch the 2024 filings as the real baseline
Because 2025-2026 data is still incomplete, competitive monitoring should treat 2024's count of 29 as the most recent reliable year rather than reading the drop-off after it as a trend.
Track recent filings →Map the Akebia-Tanabe program specifically
The 19-record co-assignee link between Akebia Therapeutics and Tanabe Pharma is large enough relative to other pairs to warrant a dedicated review of what that joint program actually claims.
Review joint filings →Common questions about this landscape
One assignee leads the field with 175 of the 709 records in scope, well ahead of the fifth-ranked company at 40 records and the tenth-ranked at 17. The top 5 assignees together account for 58.4% of all records, so filing activity is concentrated rather than evenly distributed. That said, the ranking covers 100 companies in total, so there is still a long tail of smaller filers beyond the leaders.
Filing peaked in 2019 at 83 records and has since settled lower, with the 2021-to-2024 span moving from 31 to 29 filings, a -6% change over that period. Because patent publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, the apparent drop in 2025 and 2026 reflects incomplete data rather than a real slowdown. The fairer read is that filing has plateaued at a lower rate than the 2019 peak rather than declined outright.
The evidence favours therapeutics: A61K (medicinal preparations) covers 75.2% of the 709 records and A61P (therapeutic activity) covers 55.7%, while G01N (material analysis and testing), the class closest to the physical assay, covers only 17.5%. This means most patents in this scope use urine albumin or kidney injury markers as a clinical trial endpoint or co-therapy target, not as the core invention. Anyone searching specifically for assay-hardware prior art should expect a smaller, more concentrated body of records than the therapeutic side.
This Janssen Pharmaceutica filing, published 2018-12-06, covers co-therapy methods combining canagliflozin with an ACE inhibitor, ARB, or PPAR-gamma agonist for renal and fatty liver disorders, including NASH and NAFLD. It is a method-of-treatment claim tied to a specific drug combination, not a claim over the underlying urine albumin or kidney injury marker assay. A company working on a different drug class, or on the diagnostic side of the field, would not be blocked by this filing, but anyone considering a similar SGLT2-inhibitor combination therapy should review its claim scope closely.
The smaller IPC classes point to it: G16H (healthcare informatics) and C08F (addition polymers) each cover only 4.4% of the 709 records, and C12N (microorganisms and genetic engineering) covers 2.7%. These branches, alongside point-of-care calibration and first-morning-sample stabilization chemistry, sit well outside the dominant therapeutic core and carry far lower filing density, making them the more promising areas to search before drafting a new application.
Research Urine Albumin and Kidney Markers in depth with Eureka
Go past this page: query the whole urine albumin and kidney markers 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.