UV Curable Ink Patents: Who Leads, Where the Gaps Are 2026
- One assignee dominates the ranked field. the leader holds 35 records against a fifth-place assignee at 1, with no second cluster visible in this dataset.
- Filing peaked in 2018 at 9 records and the tracked 2021-to-2024 span shows a 100% drop to zero, though 2025-2026 figures are still filling in under publication lag.
- Coatings and ink classification carries 87.0% of records while addition-polymer and polymer-processing classes sit far behind, pointing to where formulation claims actually concentrate.
Filing growth compares 2021 (5 records) with 2024 (0) — 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.
What this landscape covers
This landscape maps 46 published records filed against UV curable and energy curable ink compositions, filtered to claims touching oligomer selection, pigment absorption, migration limits, substrate adhesion, through-cure performance, and shelf stability. The scope spans 2015 to mid-2026, with the most recent year necessarily incomplete because publication trails filing by roughly eighteen months.
The receiving-office spread favours Europe and the United States, with a smaller but present PCT and Australian filing presence, suggesting formulation claims in this space are being protected in the largest ink and packaging markets rather than filed broadly worldwide.
Filing trend and technology composition
Two views of the same 46-record set: how filing activity moved year over year, and which IPC subclasses the claims actually sit in.
Filing trend, 2017-2026
Filings rose to a peak of 9 in 2018, then the tracked 2021-to-2024 window shows a full -100% decline to zero. Treat 2025 and 2026 as undercounted rather than as evidence of a stalled field, since publication lag has not yet caught up with those filing years.
IPC subclass composition
C09D (coatings, paints and inks) covers 87.0% of the 46 records, confirming that most claims are formulation-level rather than device-level. C08F and C08J each sit near 13-17%, and B41J, C08G, B41M trail near 9-11%, indicating secondary claim activity in monomer chemistry, polymer processing, and print-head-specific formulation rather than a second major cluster.
Shares are the percentage of the 46 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
Go deeper on UV Curable Ink Formulation with Eureka
This page is one run against one query. Ask Eureka your own question about uv curable ink formulation and every answer comes back with the patent numbers behind it.
Try EurekaMost-cited records in this landscape
Electrically-insulating energy curable ink or coating composition
The present invention is directed to an energy curable ink or coating composition comprising at least one multifunctional hybrid monomer having a polymerizable (meth)acrylate group and a polymerizable vinylether group and electrically insulating dielectric layers for use in printed electronic devices formed upon curing the ink or coating composition.Filed by Sun Chemical Corporation, published 2016-11-10 as WO2016178989A1 — the second most-cited record in this landscape and a direct precursor to later adhesion and dielectric-layer claims.
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | WO2017095786A1 | Polymeric aminoacrylates | 25 |
| 2 | WO2016178989A1 | Electrically-insulating energy curable ink or coating composition | 22 |
| 3 | WO2017180491A1 | Electron beam curable inkjet formulation with improved adhesion | 18 |
| 4 | US20180112089A1 | Electrically-insulating energy-curable inkjet fluids | 12 |
| 5 | JP2000290572A | Ultraviolet curable stencil printing ink | 7 |
| 6 | US20230287230A1 | Self-initiated energy curable ink compositions | 5 |
| 7 | WO2019055327A1 | Low migration energy curable inks | 5 |
| 8 | US10799911B2 | Electron beam curable inkjet formulation with improved adhesion | 4 |
| 9 | EP1806296A1 | Ultraviolet curable ink package | 4 |
| 10 | US20210009738A1 | Polymeric aminoacrylates | 3 |
Citation counts favour older, longer-indexed records inside this corpus; read them as a signal of influence on later filings, not as a measure of current commercial relevance.
Each row carries its publication number; clicking a row searches Eureka by that number.
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Three patterns stand out once the ranking, the trend, and the IPC spread are read together.
One filer, then a steep drop
The ranked field runs from 35 records at the top to 1 at fifth place, with no visible mid-tier cluster. A new entrant is not competing against a crowded field of comparable-sized filers; it is competing against a single incumbent whose claim footprint appears to dwarf everyone else counted here.
A sharp contraction, not a slow fade
The move from 5 filings in 2021 to 0 in 2024 is a complete drop-off across the last complete tracking window, not a gradual decline. Whether that reflects the technology maturing into fewer but broader claims, or genuine reduced interest, is not settled by filing counts alone.
Formulation claims dominate the class mix
C09D covers coatings, paints and inks and appears in 87.0% of the 46 records in scope. The next-largest classes, C08F and C08J, sit at 17.4% and 13.0% respectively, meaning most protective activity is happening at the ink-formulation level rather than in adjacent monomer synthesis or device integration.
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to uv curable ink formulation, with the prior art for and against each one.
Who holds the claims
The assignee ranking returned by this dataset is short — six companies — and heavily front-loaded toward a single leader.
The dominant filer in this set
One assignee accounts for 35 of the records captured in the ranking, far ahead of anyone else tracked here. Their filings anchor several of the most-cited records in the landscape, including the electrically-insulating ink composition covered above.
A thin field beyond the leader
Fifth place in this ranking holds just 1 record, and the co-assignee data shows only a single paired filing across the whole set. That is a landscape shaped by one dominant filer and a scatter of small, largely independent filers rather than a competitive cluster of similarly sized players.
No visible current-year activity
Every assignee in the ranking shows zero filings in the latest tracked year, consistent across the whole ranked field. Given the roughly 18-month publication lag, this reads as an incomplete window rather than a simultaneous stop by six unrelated filers.
| Assignee | Recent year | YoY |
|---|---|---|
| Sun Chemical Corporation | 0 | — |
| Sun Chemical Limited | 0 | — |
| The Procter & Gamble Company | 0 | — |
| Riso Kagaku Corporation | 0 | — |
| Konica Minolta Medical & Graphic, Inc. | 0 | — |
| DIEKER JURGEN | 0 | — |
Where to take this analysis
The dataset points to a concentrated leader and several thin branches. Two directions are worth pursuing before committing to a filing strategy.
Stress-test the white space claims
The under-claimed sub-areas identified here are thin in this dataset, not necessarily open globally. Run a fuller freedom-to-operate search on any branch before drafting.
Explore in EurekaWatch the leader's next move
With the leading assignee showing zero filings in the latest tracked year against a historical peak of 35 records, any renewed activity from them would be the clearest early signal of where this field moves next.
Track assignee activity in EurekaCommon questions about UV curable ink patents
In this dataset, one assignee leads with 35 of the records captured in the ranking, well ahead of the next four ranked companies, one of which holds only 1 record. That gap suggests the field is shaped more by a single incumbent's claim footprint than by a competitive cluster of similarly sized filers. Anyone assessing freedom to operate should start by reviewing that leader's granted claims before looking at the smaller filers.
Filing activity peaked at 9 records in 2018 and the tracked 2021-to-2024 window shows a complete -100% drop to zero filings. Because publication lags actual filing by roughly 18 months, the 2025 and 2026 figures in any dataset are undercounted and should not be read as proof the field has stopped. A fair read is that filing has contracted sharply through the last complete tracking window, with the most recent trend still uncertain.
Coatings, paints and inks (IPC class C09D) appear in 87.0% of the 46 records in this landscape, far ahead of any other class. Addition-polymer chemistry (C08F) and polymer processing (C08J) trail at 17.4% and 13.0% respectively, and print-head-specific claims (B41J) and condensation-polymer chemistry (C08G) sit near 10-11%. This indicates most protected inventive activity is at the ink-formulation level rather than in adjacent monomer synthesis or printer hardware.
WO2016178989A1, filed by Sun Chemical Corporation and published in 2016, claims an energy curable ink or coating composition built on a multifunctional hybrid monomer carrying both a polymerizable (meth)acrylate group and a polymerizable vinylether group, used to form electrically insulating dielectric layers in printed electronic devices. It is the second most-cited record in this landscape. Anyone formulating hybrid acrylate-vinylether ink systems for electronic or dielectric applications should review its claim scope directly rather than relying on the abstract alone.
Relative to the dense C09D coatings-and-ink cluster, this dataset shows thinner activity in electron-beam adhesion promoters, low-migration pigment dispersants, print-head-specific through-cure profiles, and dielectric-layer ink formulations. Thin representation in this particular search does not guarantee the space is open worldwide, since a narrower search string may simply be missing adjacent filings. Treat these as starting points for a targeted freedom-to-operate search rather than confirmed white space.
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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.