Aboveground Storage Tank Design Patents: Leaders & Filing Trends 2026
Aboveground Storage Tank Design Patents: Who Leads and Where Filings Are Headed
Concentrated at the top. The five leading assignees hold 30.3% of all 244 records in scope, and the ranked leader alone accounts for 23 filings. Filings ran from 8 in 2017 to a peak of 30 in 2021, then declined to 1 by 2024 — a -97% move over that three-year span. 2025 and 2026 figures are still filling in under the usual publication lag and should not be read as a continuation of the decline.
- 1CHICAGO BRIDGE & IRON CO23
- 2AXON4D CORP16
- 3IMHOF HEINRICH14
- 4BASF SE12
- 5AST SERVICES9
See the full aboveground storage tank design analysis in Eureka
- The complete ranking, not just the top five
- Every IPC branch with its share of the corpus
- The most-cited records, and where claim space is still thin
Common questions about this landscape
Who are the leading patent holders in aboveground storage tank design?
The dataset ranks 97 assignees across 244 records, and the field is concentrated at the top: the leading assignee holds 23 records, more than double the fifth-place count of 9. The top five assignees combined account for 30.3% of all 244 records in scope, while the top ten reach 46.7%. Beyond that, filings spread thinly across dozens of companies and individual inventors, each holding only a handful of records, which is typical for infrastructure hardware tied to specific terminal operators and engineering contractors.
Why did aboveground storage tank patent filings drop after 2021?
Filings peaked at 30 records in 2021 and fell to 1 by 2024, a -97% change over three years according to the tracked data. That kind of drop can reflect a design generation reaching maturity, a shift of engineering attention to adjacent systems, or simply fewer new entrants filing around an established rim-seal and floating-roof architecture. It is worth noting that 2025 and 2026 figures are still incomplete because publication typically lags filing by about 18 months, so the full extent of any rebound or continued decline is not yet visible in this data.
What patent classes cover aboveground storage tank design?
The dominant class is B65D, containers and packaging, appearing on 61.9% of the 244 records in scope, which reflects that most filings claim some structural aspect of the tank itself. Smaller but distinct clusters sit in G01F (flow, level and volume measuring, 7.4%), G01M (structural testing, 7.0%), B08B (cleaning, 5.7%), F16L (pipe fittings, 5.3%), G01N (material analysis, 5.3%), C07C (acyclic compounds, 4.9%) and A62C (fire-fighting, 4.1%). Because a single record can carry multiple IPC codes, these percentages add up to more than 100% of the record total, and they should be read as overlapping coverage rather than a strict breakdown.
Disclaimer. This analysis is based on Patsnap Eureka data drawn from a limited snapshot of global patent records and is provided for general information and reference only. Patent data carries inherent limitations — recent filings are under-counted because of publication lag, counts may be on a record or family basis, classification and applicant-name data may contain errors or duplicates, and the underlying search query defines the scope shown — so the analysis may be incomplete or inaccurate and may not reflect the full technology landscape.
Nothing here is an exhaustive prior-art, novelty, freedom-to-operate or validity search, nor does it constitute legal, financial or professional advice, and it should not be relied upon as such. Verify independently and review with qualified patent and legal professionals before acting on it.
Method: Filing trend and technology composition. Derived from a Patsnap search on Aboveground Storage Tank Design covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-07-31. Counts reflect published records only and shift as new filings publish. Every share divides by all records in scope. Data: Patsnap Eureka. See the full landscape report.