Abstract: In order to help relevant scientific and technological personnel in tobacco industry to accurately grasp the status on the development of tobacco fermentation, statistical analysis and patent mining were carried out based on a total of 318 tobacco fermentation patents published by the State Intellectual Property Office from 1985 to 2019. The results showed that: 1) The overall number of patent applications related to fermentation was not large, but it was slowly increasing after 2009. 2)The patent coverage from the Chinese domestic tobacco companies in this field showed quantitative advantages. China Tobacco Yunnan Industrial Limited Corporation possessed the largest number of patents, followed by China Tobacco Henan and Hubei Industrial Limited Corporations. 3)There were a large number of applications from the cooperation between domestic tobacco industry units and domestic universities, and it showed clear regional characteristics. 4)The distribution of IPC technologies in this field concentrated mainly on A24B, C12N (bacteria and their culture media) and C12R (Bacillus spp.), and their co-occurrence. 5) In terms of specific technical fields, the majority of patents involved the artificial fermentation of tobacco leaves by microorganisms or bio-enzymes, aimed at reducing irritation and increasing aroma and accelerating fermentation. These two aspects were the key points of patent coverage and the technologies were relatively mature. In terms of microbial agents, Bacillus was the most widely used, mainly including Bacillus subtilis, followed by Bacillus pumilus and Bacillus amyloliquefaciens. In terms of enzymes, cellulase, pectinase, protease and amylase were the hot spots. 6)In terms of patented technology for super fast fermentation, compared with the treating technologies of microorganisms and microorganisms + bio-enzymes mixed preparations, the use of enzyme(including complex enzymes)alone to treat tobacco leaves was more effective in shortening the fermentation time. In addition, although the present sources of microorganisms were mainly those found in tobacco leaves or tobacco-growing soil, safety assessment of biological agents (microorganism or enzyme) used was still worthy of attention before wider applications.