Patent Landscape Report on Aerogels

Introduction

Aerogels may not be a very new discovery but it’s one that is gathering momentum more recently in the field of material sciences and one that is
still actively being researched with incremental innovation around it happening very actively. Here are a few basic insights into this technology
based on patent filings, patent texts, citations and other patent data using the Patent iNSIGHT Pro software.

Publication Trend

What has been the IP publication trend for Aerogels?

Going by the patent publication trend, the first few decades from the early 1950’s right till the late 90’s saw around the innovation of aerogels with an average of about 20-30 patents published each year From the year 2000 onwards, the publications started to rise rapidly from about 80 published in 2000 to over 400 last year in 2009. The last 5 years have been the most remarkable clearly displaying just how significant aerogels can be for the future.

Top Assignee Trends

Who have been the top assignees or the key players for Aerogels?

While from marketing or product launches one can assume a certain manufacturer is the number one player for a certain type of technology, it could be misleading. Patent portfolios are more accurate indicator of how much a business invests in a particular technology such as touch and gives a better picture of who the top assignees in this space.The top 20 assignees by patents awarded include:

1. General Electric
2. Dow Corning Corp
3. Panasonic Corporation
4. E. Khashoggi Industries
5. Monsanto Company
6. Shell
7. BASF
8. Cabot Corp
9. Evonik Industries
10. ConocoPhillips
11. The Regents of The University Of California
12. Texas Instruments
13. Aspen Aerogels Inc
14. Wacker Chemie AG
15. German Aerospace Center
16. Proctor & Gamble
17. Tongji University
18. Akzonobel
19. DuPont
20. IBM