The global adhesives and sealants market grew from approximately $45 billion in 2010 to around $63 billion last year, according to The Adhesive and Sealant Council’s recently released “2020-2023 North American Market Report for Adhesives and Sealants, with a Global Overview.” During this period, over 200 patent applications (simple family groups) in the technical fields of adhesives and sealants were filed across the five major IP jurisdictions (US, EU, CN, JP, KR).
Interestingly, composition of matter (or chemical composition) claims constituted approximately 50% of the granted patents and at least 65% of the inactive (i.e., lapsed, withdrawn, or rejected) patent applications, the balance being process and assembly/device patents. A closer analysis of the granted process patents, especially in the field of adhesives, showed 65% of these to be fundamentally compositions claimed as methods or processes.