We kept seeing people say the same thing on consumer forums:

Moisturizers built around humectants, especially hyaluronic acid, feel fine in humid weather, but the moment the air gets dry, the hydration doesn’t hold the way they expect.

To understand how formulation teams are solving this, we analyzed 2,000+ patents and research papers.

Filings from L’Oréal, Kao, suppliers like IFF, and newer brands such as Prequel show increased activity around osmolytes (like Ectoine, Taurine, and Betaine).

The clinical signals are promising too. We are seeing a 28% reduction in Transepidermal Water Loss (TEWL) using ectoine-rich formulas.

Osmolytes are being studied for their ability to maintain intracellular water balance while supporting barrier resilience under environmental stress. That combination makes them increasingly relevant for hydration, sensitive skin, and barrier-focused pipelines.

If cellular skin hydration and resilient skin barrier sits anywhere between your 12-to-24-month roadmap, you need to see this data.

We recently hosted a 30-minute session where our research analysts, Swarnabha and Soumya, shared the full analysis.

We covered:

• The preclinical and clinical data supporting osmolyte moisture barrier claims
• How leading players and startups are complementing humectants with stress-adaptive osmolytes
• How to evaluate osmolyte classes based on claim positioning, stability, and cost

You can access the full recording and clinical data slides here: https://greyb.com/resources/webinars/osmolytes-in-skin-care/ 

The post Why L’Oréal Is Looking Beyond Hyaluronic Acid appeared first on GreyB.

Did you know Honda’s working on a system that can detect alcohol level and mood through headsets, steering wheel and even violins ?

Their system uses MEMS/NEMS biosensor arrays placed within 30 cm of the user. This could be near the steering wheel, headrest, or in many contact-based points.

It’s designed to detect gases like nitric oxide, methanol, acetone, isoprene, ammonia, CO₂, and more to estimate mood, alcohol levels, and other health signals.

This can trigger actions like preventing vehicle ignition, limiting speed, or adjusting cabin environment (music, lighting, massage) based on detected state.

It’s essentially turning your car into a breathalyzer with opinions.

An important part of the innovation is the sensor positioning strategy. At ppb-level concentrations, proximity matters. Honda specifies placement down to centimeters, including direct contact, to ensure signals don’t get lost in HVAC mixing or cabin off-gassing.

Because at these concentrations, ‘somewhere in the cabin’ is about as useful as ‘somewhere in the city.’

The system also includes flow sensors and optional pumps throughout the design. Flow sensors normalize readings by tracking breath rate and flow rate. Pumps actively pull gases toward sensor arrays with controlled flow, tackling the core repeatability challenge in breath sensing.

While the use cases are for automotive, the design could apply to any environment where passive human-state sensing is needed.

This kind of passive sensing system is just one example of how vehicles are becoming complex, data-rich environments and why clarity around what’s actually deployed (versus just declared) matters more than ever.

This builds on Honda’s broader IP in passive wellness sensing, including earlier patents on anxiety estimation through breathing patterns and body movements without cameras.

My team recently analyzed Honda’s strategic patent activity in automotive tech. We looked at where they’re investing in R&D globally, which patents are highly influential (most cited) and which technologies they pushed through faster than usual to bring to market quickly.

You can find the entire analysis here: https://greyb.com/blog/case-study-on-honda/

Regards, 
Deepak

The post Honda’s Car That Can Read Your Mood appeared first on GreyB.

This is a massive pattern my team noticed while they were there.

They spent two days talking to the founders, watching demos, asking about their timelines and bottlenecks.

Based on those conversations, we have mapped 35+ startups across seven innovation buckets within food tech to show you where the industry is placing its biggest bets:

One of the startups, Solar Foods, has created Solein®, a yellow powder that is 78% protein, made through hydrogen fermentation. They capture CO2 from the air, pair it with water and renewable electricity, and feed the resulting mix to Xanthobacter bacteria. As the bacteria feast on this mix, they rapidly multiply. This resulting biomass is then harvested and dried into a nutrient-packed powder. The production is entirely independent of agriculture.

It’s already being tested in Singapore in ice cream and headed for protein shakes and bars in the US.

Nourished, another UK based start up, creates a single personalized gummy tailored to what your body needs. You take an online quiz about your lifestyle, and their 3D printer stacks seven layers of nutrients into one gummy on demand. They’ve partnered with Colgate for oral health and Neutrogena for skincare gummies.

Now that the San Francisco summit is a few weeks away, knowing who showed up last time can give you an idea of what to expect in the next one.

We profiled 8 companies, including Solar Foods and Nourished to show you:

• Current TRL stage and commercial status
• Regulatory status across FDA, EFSA, and SFA
• Funding amounts and investor names
• Active partnerships (Colgate, ADM, Neutrogena, Ajinomoto)

If you’re attending FFT SF 2026, this gives you a good sense of the types of startups and innovation you can expect there.

Grab the complete FFT London Report here (it’s free!)- https://greyb.com/resources/future-foodtech-2025-report/

The post Would You Drink Protein Shake Made From Air? appeared first on GreyB.

Pyrowave developed a nano-purification process that filters contaminated plastic at the molecular level using ceramic membranes. Like ultra-precise sieves, it removes heavy metals, inks, and adhesives. The output is food-grade quality that can be recycled infinitely.

We knew how critical this is for packaging and sustainability professionals especially with PPWR changing the way packaging is designed, sourced, and evaluated across Europe. So, we hosted a webinar that brought these questions to the table:

• How can teams source PCR that’s genuinely food-grade and reliable?
• What design swaps, inks, adhesives, closures can actually lift you from Grade C to B?
• Reuse vs. deposit return systems: when to use each?
• Data to capture now for PPWR reviews

We even shared a supplier diligence checklist and a component-swap matrix- simple, practical tools to help packaging teams make confident, compliant decisions.

If you missed it, no worries. You can still catch the full recording and access all the resources here: https://greyb.com/resources/ppwr-ready-packaging/.

The post How Nano-Purification Could Solve the Food-Grade PCR Problem appeared first on GreyB.

This matters because Wi-Fi 7 is moving faster than expected. About 500 products are already certified, and Apple just launched the iPhone with Multi-Link Operation. That means licensing conversations are starting earlier than usual.

Looking at the Wi-Fi 7 patents, we noticed a few things:

• Most companies have Wi-Fi 7 patents they haven’t declared yet.
• Aegis 11 SA (Sisvel) and Avalon/Acacia are actively acquiring Wi-Fi 7 assets, which usually means licensing pools are forming.

My team analyzed over 4,000 Wi-Fi 7 patents to identify where the high-value patents lie, who holds them, and where the gaps exist for strategic positioning. They walked through the complete analysis in a detailed webinar.

The session also covered how AI can be used to find high-value patents quickly without spending a fortune.

If you’d like to watch the recording and access the resources, you can register here: https://info.greyb.com/wi-fi-7-sep-licensing-webinar

The post Oppo and Sony Enter the Top 10 Wi-Fi 7 Patent Holders appeared first on GreyB.

That means some licensing demands include patents that aren’t truly essential to the standard.

This creates a nightmare for licensing negotiations – how do you assess fair FRAND rates when you can’t tell which patents actually control the technology? Without clear essentiality guidance, every licensing discussion becomes a guessing game.

My teammates hosted a webinar to tackle exactly this challenge on September 30th, 12 PM ET. https://info.greyb.com/wi-fi-7-sep-licensing-webinar 

It covered:

• Untapped opportunities for strategic filing or smart acquisitions, based on analysis of 4,000+ patents
• Where you stand in Wi-Fi 7 patents space and how to turn that knowledge into licensing leverage
• Which high-value patents can be acquired, or at least should be on your licensing radar
• Core technologies in Wi-Fi 7 where most SEPs are and how to find similar patents in your portfolio

If you’d like to watch the recording and access the resources, you can register here: https://info.greyb.com/wi-fi-7-sep-licensing-webinar 

The post 4,000 Wi-Fi 7 patents walk into a bar… only 47% were essential appeared first on GreyB.

When Syngenta sued Willowood over the manufacturing of the pesticide azoxystrobin, their compound patents had already expired. Yet, Syngenta still won because they held process patents related to its production.

Cases like these arise because there’s an issue with FTO search philosophy.

Traditional FTOs focus on finding the nouns (e.g., searching for ‘clay catalyst’). But the real risk lies in the verbs and functional descriptions (e.g., what the catalyst is made of, how it’s treated, how it’s implemented in the process etc.).

The most effective FTO approach deconstructs the underlying scientific principles of your process to find functionally identical patents, even when they use different language. That’s exactly how our methodology works- going beyond simple keyword matching.

For example, while helping a client manufacturing spandex with a clay-based catalyst, my team uncovered a high-risk patent. This patent didn’t mention ‘clay’ anywhere. Instead, it claimed synthesis with “acid-treated silica-alumina.”

Our in-house experts immediately flagged this. They knew that:

1. Clay is a natural source of silica-alumina.
2. Acid treatment is a standard method for activating such catalysts.

This helped us connect the dots and identify a serious threat that a simple keyword search would’ve missed. In short, finding the threats buried in the “how,” not just the “what.”

The post Your FTO Search Could Be Missing Critical Patent Risks appeared first on GreyB.

Seprify AG, a spin-off from Cambridge and Fribourg, has created their cellulose-based pigment inspired by the ultra-white scales of the Cyphochilus beetle. It cleverly mimics nature’s light-scattering design to achieve brilliant opacity without the risks associated with nanoparticles. 

They’ve even raised SFr3.4 million ($3.8 million) in seed funding to commercialize this alternative and won the de Vigier Prize in 2022.

On September 17th, we held a short 30-minute webinar exploring TiO₂and how to navigate the whole process without the usual headaches. The session covered:

• How to avoid costly reformulation delays
• Which TiO₂ alternatives show the most promise for scalability
• Ways to preserve brightness, texture, and shelf life without exceeding budget limits

With EU bans already enacted on food and growing pressure on drugs and cosmetics, this discussion offered practical insights for teams rethinking their formulations.

If you’d like to watch the recording and access the resources, you can register here: https://info.greyb.com/reformulating-without-tio-webinar.

The post TiO₂ replacement in a bug? appeared first on GreyB.

My team has been tracking the different sugar reduction methods that companies are coming up with, and I wanted to share a couple of them with you. 

As you know, replicating the original taste of the sweet-sweet sucrose has been the biggest challenge. Sweet toothed users wish for natural low-calorie sweeteners. 

Coca-Cola has been working on sugar alternatives but hasn’t been able to nail the original sugar taste. 

However, Coca-Cola and Purecircle are now working hard to achieve a flavor profile that is similar to sucrose.

They’re attempting it by passing a solution of steviol glycosides through a multi-column system which is packed with an adsorbent resin. They have described this process in their patent US2022232869A1. 

Apart from that, Sweet Green Fields and EPC Natural, are also working on steviol glycosides. More precisely, they wish to improve the solubility of steviol glycosides with hydrolysis. 

They combine the hydrolysed compound with other salts, and natural or synthetic sweeteners to make compositions with improved solubility and sensory profile, as mentioned in their patent EP3768098A4.

We have done a lot of research on FDA approved sugar alternatives similar to above examples. Apart from alternatives, we’ve also covered their consumer reaction, and their taste profile.  

You can find our research here- https://greyb.com/blog/sugar-reduction-technology/ 

The post Coca-Cola’s choice of sugar alternative appeared first on GreyB.

This changes who controls video codec technology globally with tech and software companies now holding more patents (38.8%) than traditional electronics and telecom firms.

To make better licensing decisions teams need to analyze the companies and technologies behind H.267 long before the standard is finalized. So to help them my team created our Beyond VVC (H.267) Report- https://greyb.com/resources/beyond-vvc-h-267-report/

Some key takeaways from the report include:

• Two competing approaches- ECM leads with over 3,000+ patents, focused on Intra/Inter Prediction and In-Loop Filtering. NNVC, with 590+ patents, is betting on AI-powered, end-to-end compression, creating a parallel codec architecture.
• AOMedia’s Silence Signals a Split- Google and Tencent are the only AOMedia members contributing to JVET, while major players like Apple, Amazon, and Meta are absent. This points to diverging paths between AV2 and H.267.

My team reviewed JVET meeting documents to understand the core technical concepts, then used these insights to conduct targeted patent searches around the actual technology being considered for the H.267 standard.

Additionally, IAM has published an article based on the insights from our report. You can read it here.

The post China owns 54% of Beyond VVC patents appeared first on GreyB.