What's Happening in Crop Protection Patent Filings

Most major crop protection companies have moved beyond only targeting a breakthrough molecule. They long ago expanded to grow their capabilities through formulation, mixtures, trait combinations, processes and more. They are all building systematic approaches to their IP.

Earlier this year I built a patent database to follow, track and breakdown patent filings in a more structured way so that I could deliver a better understanding of what is happening across multiple segments of the industry — this goes across precision ag, ag equipment, crop protection, biologicals, fertilizer and seed & trait.

One of the initial efforts was to integrate patent filings into the Upstream Ag Professional Agribusiness Database that is now live. The next effort is to eventually be able to make this patent database available to subscribers, but in the interim, to be able to deliver the insights from the database in articles and informative graphics. The first rendition of that is below which includes some overviews of how crop protection patents, the trends and company breakdowns.

Note: The database isn’t perfect today and ONLY covers the United States, Europe and WIPO today. It also is focused on larger player filings today, so there are misses when it comes to smaller university based filings, or even filings from start-ups could be missed for example.

I began building the system in June, so the actual first database entry’s started in July. From that point, the database has collected 322 crop protection filings through October.

Interestingly, about a third claim “new chemistry.” The majority of the rest protect chemistry that already exists: mixtures, formulations, use methods, processes, crystal forms and traits that keep actives commercially strong after the molecule patent runs out: