Abstract: Total of 1 666 patents related to tobacco additives published by State Intellectual Property Office during 2011 to 2015 were statistically analyzed for fully understanding the status quo and forecasting the development trends of tobacco additives. The results showed that:1) The total number of tobacco additive patent applications raised continuously from 2011 to 2015, especially the number of invention patents. Among them, the numbers of patents applied by China Tobacco Hubei Industrial Limited Company and China Tobacco Yunnan Industrial Limited Company were the most. 2) A24B, C11B and A24D patents would still be the research focus of tobacco additives, C08B, B01J, C12P, B01D, C07H and D21H might be the potential hot topics in the future. 3) Among the foreign applicants, the numbers of tobacco additive patents owned by British American Tobacco Company, R J Reynolds Tobacco Company, Japan Tobacco Company and Philip Morris Tobacco Company were the most, especially British American Tobacco Company.