1. Introduction

Laundry is one of the most water-intensive routines in a household. Conventional washing machines rely on large volumes of water to dissolve detergent, loosen soil and carry it away. As water scarcity, utility costs and environmental awareness become bigger concerns, manufacturers and researchers have started asking a simple question: can clothes be cleaned, refreshed or sanitised with little or no water?

The answer has produced a new family of products broadly called waterless washing machines. They use steam, hot air, ultraviolet (UV) light, ozone, ultrasonic energy, polymer beads or even solid carbon dioxide to treat garments in place of a conventional water bath. This three-part series analyses a patent landscape study on the subject. This first part sets out the scope of the study and explains the global filing picture: which companies and countries are filing the most patents, how filing activity has changed over time and what that says about the direction of the industry.

2. Scope and Method of the Study

The study set out to understand the latest trends in waterless washing machines by analysing patents and published patent applications from around the world. Understanding the method matters, because it shapes how far the numbers can be trusted and how they should be read.

• Size of the data set: roughly 2,000 patents and published applications were analysed, all published worldwide within the preceding five years.
• One record per invention: only one representative patent member was analysed for each patent family. A single invention filed in several countries is therefore counted once, which avoids inflating the numbers.
• Language handling: documents not written in English were analysed through machine translation, so some nuance in non-English filings may have been lost.
• Nature of the report: the study is a technical analysis, not a legal opinion. It is not a patentability, infringement or freedom-to-operate assessment.

A further point is worth keeping in mind throughout this series. The data in the study runs only up to 2017 and 2017 is clearly a partial year. The findings describe the field as it stood at that time and should be read as a snapshot rather than a current market report.

3. Who Is Filing? The Top Assignees

The assignee is the company, university or individual that owns a patent. Ranking assignees by share of filings shows who is investing most heavily in waterless technology. The study found a clear leader and a long tail of smaller players.

Source: study executive summary (assignee and technology-trend slides). Percentages are approximate and are shares of the analysed data set.

The most striking finding is LG's dominance. With about 30% of all patents, LG files roughly four times as many as Bosch, the next company on the list and far more than any other appliance maker. After LG there is a sharp drop: Bosch and Haier sit at around 8% and 7% and the remaining big names, Electrolux, Whirlpool and Samsung, each hold only 2% to 3%.

This pattern suggests that waterless washing was not a mainstream, crowded race at the time. It was a field where one company had built a strong early lead in intellectual property, while the rest of the industry was still exploring it.

4. Where Are Inventions Coming From? Priority Countries

The priority country is the country where a patent was first filed. It is a useful proxy for where an invention originated. The ranking is as follows.

Source: study executive summary (top priority countries).

Korea and China together account for close to two thirds of all priority filings. The geographic split of the data reveals an important difference between the two countries. In Korea, about 96% of the filings come from the top assignees, meaning LG, Bosch and Electrolux, which account for roughly 192 applications. Korean innovation is therefore concentrated in a handful of large companies.

China looks very different. Only around 15% of Chinese-priority filings come from the top assignees, while about 85% come from others, including universities and individual inventors. Chinese activity is broad and fragmented, spread over many research institutions rather than owned by a few manufacturers. Germany, the United States and Japan sit in between, with a mix of corporate and individual filers.

5. How Has Filing Activity Changed Over Time?

Publication counts show how interest in the topic has developed. In the late 1990s and 2000s filings were few, typically between about 2 and 14 per year. This changed sharply from 2012 onward.

Source: study bibliographic trends. 2017 data is incomplete.

In other words, annual filings jumped from a low double-digit level to roughly 75 to 110 per year. The period of highest activity ran from 2012 to 2016, with 2016 the single biggest year. In 2016, the largest numbers of publications came from LG, Bosch and individual inventors.

The time series for individual companies tells a related story. LG's publication count climbed rapidly after 2012, peaking in 2014 at around 46 documents per year, then declined as the company shifted its attention. Bosch, Haier, Electrolux, Samsung and Whirlpool all stayed at much lower levels, mostly in single digits to the low teens per year.

6. What the Classification Data Shows

Patent office classification codes (IPC and CPC) describe the technical area of an invention. The relevant class in this study covers the laundering, drying, ironing, pressing or folding of textile articles. This is consistent with the idea that waterless machines are not only about washing. Many of them combine cleaning, refreshing, drying and finishing in a single appliance, a theme explored further in Part 2.

7. Key Takeaways

• Waterless washing is a concentrated patent field: LG alone holds about 30% of the analysed filings, followed by Bosch (~8%) and Haier (~7%).
• Korea (~35%) and China (~29%) originate roughly two thirds of the inventions, but in very different ways: Korea through large companies, China through universities and many small filers.
• Filing activity surged between 2012 and 2016, peaking in 2016, which marks this period as the point when the industry took the idea seriously.
• The data is a historical snapshot ending in 2017 and measures patenting effort, not market sales.