PROSPECTIVE STUDY OF FOOD AND PREBIOTIC INGREDIENTS PATENTS

Resumo

Consumer awareness of healthy living habits has contributed to the increased demand for foods that promote specific health benefits, including prebiotic foods and ingredients. This work seeks to map patents related to prebiotic foods and ingredients to understand the dynamics of intellectual property, as well as delimit and identify technological trends in this segment. The search for patent documents was performed through Orbit software, using keywords and main technological classifications as search strategy (A23L, A23C, A23G, C08B, C12N). 13,939 patents were found worldwide and 245 in Brazil. The analysis of the results identified a continuous growth of technologies directed to the development of prebiotic foods and ingredients at an international level, pointing to China as the country that filed the most patent applications. However, the global owner of this technology is Nestec, a subsidiary of Nestlé, an important multinational in the food industry. In Brazil, the largest depositors are research institutions. Because it is still incipient, the technology under study has great prospects and potential for generating numerous opportunities to be explored to strengthen the food industry.