The most influential family in this dataset is built around US20180014485A1, 'Environmentally controlled vertical farming system', cited 148 times, with its continuation US10306847B2 adding 40 citations and a PCT counterpart WO2018013161A1 adding 24. These establish the core approach of growing crops in vertically stacked units inside a fully controlled lighting, airflow and humidity environment. Later filings, including MJNN LLC's grow-tower conveyance patent US11612112B2, build on this base rather than originate it, so any new entrant should review this family's claims first.

Based on this dataset, filing peaked in 2020 at 6 families and has since flattened, with the 2022 midpoint at only 2 records and 2026 showing 2 with the year still open. That is a flat-to-declining pattern rather than sustained growth. Because publication typically lags filing by around 18 months, the most recent one to two years are likely undercounted, but the broader multi-year trend is still one of cooling rather than acceleration.

The United States leads with 13 records, closely followed by India at 12, then Europe (EPO) at 3, WIPO/PCT at 2, and Australia and Canada at 1 each. The near-parity between the US and India is notable: it suggests two distinct filer communities rather than a single US-centric applicant base, and any competitive review should treat India as a primary jurisdiction, not a secondary one.

Beyond the core horticulture and forestry classification (A01G, present in all 34 records), the next most common overlaps are business/commerce data processing (G06Q), animal husbandry and fishing (A01K), and electric heating and lighting circuits (H05B), each appearing in a handful of records. This shows vertical farming claims are increasingly combined with software-driven crop management and lighting control rather than filed as pure horticultural mechanical structures.

The secondary IPC codes with only light coverage — control and regulating systems, pictorial communication (imaging), and printed circuit assemblies — each appear in just two records, well below the horticultural core. This points to crop-recipe control software, growth-indexing imaging, and integrated lighting-circuit hardware as areas with filing activity but no dense prior-art cluster yet, making them lower-risk entry points than the heavily cited structural and irrigation claims.