Vacuum Skin Packaging Patents: Top Companies & Filing Trends 2026
A patent landscape review of vacuum skin packaging: filing trends since 2015, the leading assignees, technology composition by IPC class, and where white space remains for new entrants.
Filing growth = 2021 (23 records) → 2024 (11); 2024 is the last year we treat as complete. Top-5 share = the 5 largest assignees ÷ all 787 records in scope (CR5), not the ranked leaders only.
What the vacuum skin packaging patent record shows
Vacuum skin packaging (VSP) sits at the intersection of film lamination and food-contact packaging engineering: a thermoformable film draws tightly over a product and bonds to a rigid or semi-rigid base, producing the tight, form-fitting skin seen on fresh meat, cheese and hard goods. The 787 records in scope span 2015 through the current filing year, with classification concentrated in container and packaging structures (B65D) and packaging process claims (B65B), overlapping heavily with laminate construction (B32B). That overlap is the tell: much of the contested ground is not the vacuum-forming step itself but the multi-layer film stack that makes the seal peelable, printable and food-safe.
Ownership of this space is unusually top-heavy. A single legacy packaging-film assignee accounts for the majority of records, and the concentration figures below make clear that new entrants are filing into a field with an entrenched leader rather than a genuinely open race.
Filing trend and technology composition
Two views of the same 787-record dataset: how filing activity has moved year over year, and which IPC subclasses carry the claim density.
Filing rose to a 2017 peak, then eased
Annual filings climbed to a peak of 70 records in 2017. The 2021-to-2024 window, the last stretch unaffected by publication lag, fell 52% from 23 to 11 records — a real cooling, not an artefact, though 2025 and 2026 figures will rise as later-published applications catch up.
Publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, so 2025 onwards are still filling in. Growth rates on this page therefore end at 2024; running them to the last bar would understate the field.
Container structure and packaging process dominate
B65D (containers & packaging) touches 66.1% of the 787 records and B65B (packaging & wrapping) 57.6%, the two core subclasses for any VSP filing. B32B (layered products) still reaches 36.2%, confirming that film-laminate construction is claimed almost as often as the packaging step itself, while polymer-composition classes (C08L, C08J) and food-preservation classes (A23B, A23L) sit in the single digits — present, but clearly secondary.
Shares are the percentage of the 787 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
Go deeper on Vacuum Skin Packaging Patent Landscape with Eureka
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Try EurekaThe patents setting the terms of the field
US8047368B2 — Vacuum skin packaging laminate, package and process for using same
The patent claims a vacuum skin packaging laminate built from a first film, a second film, an adhesive bonding them, and a deliberately adhesive-free interfacial section between the two. The construction gives a flat first-film surface for product markings and a thermoformable second-film surface that conforms to the product shape, plus the packages and packaging processes built from that laminate.Filed by Curwood, Inc. — published 2011-11-01.
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | US5346735A | Peelable barrier film for vacuum skin packages and the like | 188 |
| 2 | US4889731A | Package having peelable film | 143 |
| 3 | US5491009A | Amorphous nylon composition and films | 135 |
| 4 | US5427807A | Method of packaging food products | 128 |
| 5 | US4886690A | Peelable barrier film for vacuum skin packages and the like | 127 |
| 6 | US4933193A | Microwave cooking package | 113 |
| 7 | US3950919A | Apparatus and process for vacuum skin packaging | 112 |
| 8 | WO1997032663A1 | Desiccant entrained polymer | 99 |
| 9 | US3835618A | Apparatus for producing vacuum skin packages in multiples | 99 |
| 10 | US4611456A | Process for making a vacuum skin package and product formed thereby | 94 |
Citation counts favour older filings inside any searched corpus — treat them as a signal of influence on later filers, not as a measure of current commercial importance.
Each row carries its publication number; clicking a row searches Eureka by that number.
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Browse MCP servers →What the numbers mean for a filing decision
Three findings that change how a team should read this field before drafting or licensing around it.
One leader, then a steep drop-off
The leading assignee alone holds 410 records against a fifth-place figure of only 11. That gap is the story: this is not a field of comparable rivals but one incumbent with a long tail of single- or few-filing entrants below it.
Activity has cooled from its 2017 peak
Annual filings peaked at 70 in 2017 and the last fully comparable window shows a real decline. Read the 2025-26 near-zero figures with caution — publication lag of roughly 18 months means those years are still filling in, not evidence of a sudden stop.
Laminate construction is a parallel battleground
Over a third of records carry a layered-products (B32B) class alongside the core packaging classes, meaning film-stack claims — adhesive layers, peelability, barrier properties — are contested almost as heavily as the vacuum-forming process itself.
Filing offices cluster in a handful of jurisdictions
The United States (123), Europe (118) and Australia (100) lead receiving-office counts, with China (58) and Canada (54) following. That spread suggests VSP protection strategies still prioritise established food-packaging markets over broad global filing.
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to vacuum skin packaging patent landscape, with the prior art for and against each one.
| Assignee | Co-assignee | Shared families |
|---|---|---|
| Cryovac, Inc. | PALUMBO RICCARDO | 6 |
| Cryovac, Inc. | W.R. Grace & Co. | 3 |
| Cryovac, Inc. | LIPEROTI ANTONIO | 3 |
| Cryovac, Inc. | GRANILI ANDREA | 3 |
| Cryovac, Inc. | CIOCCA MAURIZIO | 3 |
| E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Co. (USA) | CHEN JOHN CHU | 3 |
| Cryovac, Inc. | RIZZI JVANOHE | 2 |
| Cryovac, Inc. | RICCIO MARINA | 2 |
Only 10 co-assignee pairs appear in the dataset, and the strongest pairing recurs across a small cluster of related filings — co-invention here looks more like internal cross-crediting within one organisation than genuine external partnership.
Where to take this analysis
The dataset points to a concentrated, cooling field with a specific open branch in film-laminate construction. Two directions follow from that.
Map the laminate sub-claims before drafting
With B32B touching 36.2% of records, a new filing that only addresses the vacuum-forming step without mapping adhesive-layer and interfacial-section claims risks sitting on top of existing laminate art rather than beside it.
Explore the claim space in EurekaWatch the 2025-26 figures as they fill in
The apparent drop to near-zero in the most recent years is a publication-lag artefact, not a real stop in filing. Re-check the trend in twelve months before concluding the field has gone quiet.
Track filing trends in EurekaQuestions practitioners ask about this field
One assignee holds 410 of the 787 records in scope, far ahead of the next-largest filer. The top five combined account for 72.7% of all records, and the top ten reach 78.5%. This means the field has a single dominant incumbent rather than several comparably sized competitors, which matters for freedom-to-operate analysis since most prior art will trace back to one filer's portfolio.
No — filing peaked in 2017 at 70 records and the last fully comparable window, 2021 to 2024, shows a 52% decline from 23 to 11 records. That said, the 2025 and 2026 figures in any dataset like this are understated because publication typically lags actual filing by around 18 months, so the true recent trend will only be clear once those years finish filling in.
The core classes are B65D (containers & packaging, 66.1% of the 787 records) and B65B (packaging & wrapping, 57.6%), reflecting the packaging structure and process itself. B32B (layered products, 36.2%) is also heavily represented, showing that film-laminate construction — the adhesive layers and peelable interfaces that make VSP work — is claimed almost as often as the vacuum-forming step. Polymer composition and food-preservation classes appear but at single-digit shares.
US8047368B2, assigned to Curwood, Inc. and published in 2011, claims a vacuum skin packaging laminate made of a first film, a second film, an adhesive bonding them, and a deliberately adhesive-free interfacial section between the two films. That construction gives a flat top surface for printing and labelling and a thermoformable bottom surface that conforms to the packaged product. The claims extend to the resulting packages and to the packaging processes built around that laminate, so anyone using a similar dual-film, partial-adhesive stack should check this filing carefully.
The concentration figures point to the answer indirectly: with one assignee holding the majority of records and the core B65D/B65B classes saturated, the more open ground sits in the smaller adjacent classes — polymer compositions (C08L, 6.5%), polymer processing (C08J, 2.8%) and food-preservation integration (A23B/A23L, around 4% each). These lower-density classes suggest room for claims that combine VSP structure with specific polymer formulations or preservation methods rather than the packaging geometry alone.
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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.