Microalgae Patent Landscape

***Insights for better business decisions***

Microalgae:

are invisible and unicellular organisms found in aquatic habitats.
have rich untapped diversities (> hundreds of thousands of species).
are rich in nutrients and protein, with applications in human food, nutrition, animal feed and agriculture.
Current commercial products include spirulina, Chlorella and polyunsaturated fatty acids (omega-3 and omega-6).
have been consumed as food for centuries. Chlorella supplement is one of the main supplements in Japan (where >30% of the population take it).
have high potential to mitigate climate change. Most microalgae are photosynthetic. They could sequester CO2 and are responsible for ±75% of global oxygen supply. There exists numerous examples of microalgae-based energy and carbon capture applications.

Microalgae Patent Case Studies

Our questions:

•How does the microalgae patent landscape look like?

•Who are the key players?

•What are the main applications (e.g. food, nutrition, animal feed, carbon sequestration and agriculture)?

•What are the main challenges?

Microalgae Patent Publications Overview

>42000 microalgae-relevant patent families were retrieved in the last 40 years from PatentInspiration.

Microalgae Patent Publications Overview

•China has the highest number of patent publications (N > 27000).

•A significant fraction (>65%) of the microalgae-relevant patent families is Chinese patent publication, where the patent activity increase begins in the mid-2000s.

•From 1980 until ~2005, Japan has the highest number of patent family publications, with China gradually taking over as #1 in the mid-2000s.

The above graph (excluding Chinese patent publications) illustrates an increase in microalgae patent activities worldwide since ~2010.

**Key Worldwide Microalgae Patent Players**

The key patent players include **companies** and **academic institutions**.
They are from **diverse** industries such as **automotive** (e.g. Denso Corporation), **food or animal feed** (e.g. **Corbion**), **health and nutrition** (omega-3 fatty acids, **Fermentalg and DSM**) and personal care (**Euglena**).
**Denso Corporation** is a Japanese automotive parts supplier, who is also partly owned by Toyota. Their interest in microalgae is partly related to microalgae’s CO2 absoprtion application.
The patent dataset also includes key players who are now owned by another company. such as Corbion (who have bought specific microalgae-based business of Solazyme and Terravia.

Using patent classification (A23) allows us to reveal key players within the human food and animal feed domains, revealing many players from Europe, United States, Japan and Korea.

**The patent dataset covers diverse scientific topics**

such as **water treatment** (C02F), **cultivation** (C12M), **animal-relevant** (A01K and A23K), and **human** **foods** (A23L).

Segmentation of patent classification reveals distinct topic focus of key players. Essentially all companies have patent publication in C12 class, related to the biotechnology of microalgae.

Companies with animal-relevant patents (A01K and A23K) include Denso Corporation, Fermentalg and Korea Institute of Science and Technology, while companies with the most food-relevant patents (A23L) include Roquette Freres, Solazyme, Danippon Ink and Chemicals, Euglena, DSM and Denso Corporation.

Patent Examples

The patent dataset reveals diverse applications using microalgae, some of which are unique and innovative.

Human Food

Production of microalgae-based iron-complexed proteins for **meat analog applications (Triton Algae Innovation**, US2020332249A1).
Tempeh fermentation product containing microalgae (e.g. Euglena) for **food, nutrition** or other applications (**Euglena, Japan** WO2023120006A1).

Animal Feed

Addition of **microalgae-derived omega-3 fatty acids** in animal feed, for the enrichment of animal meat for human consumption (**Devenish**, US2020297018A1)

Aquaculture

Microalgae-based (e.g. Coccomyxa) feed for **abalones** (a delicacy in different cultures, (**Denso Corp,** JP7107259B2, granted)

Environment and climate change

**Collection of microplastics** from water using microalgae secreting a viscous substance (***Novelgen, Japan,*** *WO2023074716A1). This is one of the latest microalgae patents, and demonstrates an entirely new application for microalgae. This idea is described in* *project Ikkaku* *by Novelgen.*

Summary

1. There are active microalgae patent activities (>42000 patent families) worldwide for the last 40 years, with increasing patent publications since 2010. China, Korea and Japan are the top patent publication countries.

2. A large fraction of the patent dataset is related to the biotechnology (C12) of microalgae, suggesting significant innovation in the growth, strain optimization and cultivation of microalgae species.

3. The microalgae patent dataset covers diverse scientific topics, such as water treatment (C02F), cultivation (C12M), animal-relevant (A01K and A23K), and human foods (A23L).

4. Tiny but Mighty: The microalgae patent dataset uncovers numerous unique ideas and applications in diverse fields such as human food and nutrition, animal feed, aquaculture, CO2 absorption and microplastic collection.

How could we help you?

Here, we provide a very high-level snapshot of the microalgae patent landscape.

Depending on your innovation needs, there exists opportunities for deeper dive into this exciting field, such as:

Company profile creation for benchmarking analysis

Segmentation of the dataset by variables (e.g. patent topics) for insights generation or innovation white space identification

This is distinct from an actual consulting assignment/report, where we dive deeper into specific deliverables to extract actionable insights. An assignment is usually a multi-faceted competitive intelligence exercise, where insights from patent landscape study represent only a slice of the information pie.

Created: September, 2023