Intellectual Property in Waste Management: A Reference to Address a Future Challenge

This article analyzes the set of existing patents in the field of Waste Management. The extraction of the data and its exploitation allow the authors to lay the foundations for the development of a well-founded exploratory analysis of the sector's capacity to address the immediate and future challenges it faces, considering that these challenges are binding on today's society as a whole and committing the societies that will succeed us in the future. Our basic aim is to offer a general view regarding the type of assignees, differences regarding the technological fields across regions of the world, and some quality indicators of patents and its antecedent factors. A sector's capacity for technological innovation and development can be partially measured by considering its muscle and interest in protecting its intellectual property. Since this is a sector with a high social impact and a high degree of regulation imposed by public agents, the innovative work in the field should be aligned with the framework defined by those. In spite of these conditions, our empirical study show the extent of the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic crisis on the activity of patenting in waste management. Also, we conclude that there are clear differences in patenting which respond to the different needs and circumstances that regions face regarding Waste Management. Keywords: Waste Management, Patents, DOCDB Patent Families, Recycling, Energy from Waste, Composting, Landfilling, Incineration, Europe