Aircraft Cabin Humidity Patents: Top Companies & Filing Trends 2026
- 37.2% concentration at the top. The five leading assignees hold 265 of 712 records in scope — a field with a clear leadership tier rather than a flat field of single filers.
- Filings up 250% from 2021 to 2024. Annual filings rose from 6 in 2021 to 21 in 2024, the clearest complete-year growth signal in the dataset before publication lag distorts the count.
- E04B building-structure claims dominate at 34.0%. Insulation and structural moisture-control filings (E04B, B32B, D04H) far outnumber aircraft-specific B64C filings, which sit at just 6.2% of records.
Filing growth compares 2021 (6 records) with 2024 (21) — a three-year span. 2024 is the most recent year we treat as complete: publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, so 2025 onwards are still filling in and any growth rate that ends there would understate the field. Top-5 share is the combined record count of the five largest assignees divided by all 712 records in scope (CR5), not by the ranked leaders only.
What this landscape covers
This landscape tracks 712 published patent records filed between 2015 and mid-2026 that combine cabin humidification, condensate collection or insulation-blanket claims with moisture-accumulation, drainage-path, vapor-barrier, dew-point-control, membrane-dehumidifier or microbial-growth language. The search string deliberately pairs aircraft cabin terms with the broader building and materials vocabulary that much of this art actually uses, because condensation control in a pressurised, temperature-cycled enclosure draws heavily on insulation and vapor-barrier engineering developed outside aviation.
The result is a field that reads as much like a building-materials landscape as an aerospace one: insulation blanket and layered-laminate claims outnumber airframe-specific filings, and the leading assignees include building-insulation and construction-materials companies alongside Boeing. That mix matters for freedom-to-operate work, because prior art blocking a cabin humidity claim may sit in a roofing or nonwoven-fabric filing rather than an aerospace one.
Filing trends and technology composition
Annual filing counts and IPC composition for the 712 records in scope, drawn directly from the underlying dataset.
Filing activity, 2017-2026
Filings peaked at 52 in 2020, dipped through 2021 (6 filings), then rebounded sharply to 21 by 2024 — a 250% increase over that three-year span. 2025 and 2026 figures are still incomplete because publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, so the apparent tail-off in the most recent years should not be read as a slowdown.
Technology composition by IPC subclass
E04B (building structures) accounts for 34.0% of the 712 records, followed by B32B laminates at 15.7% and D04H nonwovens at 14.3%. Aircraft-specific B64C filings are the smallest major class at 6.2%, underscoring how much of this art originates in general insulation and construction engineering rather than airframe design.
Shares are the percentage of the 712 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
Go deeper on Aircraft Cabin Humidity and Condensation Control with Eureka
This page is one run against one query. Ask Eureka your own question about aircraft cabin humidity and condensation control and every answer comes back with the patent numbers behind it.
Try EurekaRepresentative and most-cited filings
US6670011B2 — Pre-cut fibrous insulation blanket
An elongated fibrous insulation blanket is pre-cut for custom fitting into wall, floor, ceiling and roof cavities of different widths formed by a building's framework. The blanket carries at least one, preferably two or three, series of cuts between its major surfaces, with successive cuts separated by separable connectors that hold adjacent sections together for handling but can be pulled apart by hand to fit a given cavity width.Filed by Johns Manville International; granted 2003-12-30.
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | US6491254B1 | Environment control system for aircraft having interior condensation problem reduction, cabin air quality imp… | 243 |
| 2 | US20110086567A1 | Bio-based binders for insulation and non-woven mats | 161 |
| 3 | US5011542A | Method and apparatus for treating objects in a closed vessel with a solvent | 132 |
| 4 | US20030070391A1 | Fastening with wide fastening membrane | 116 |
| 5 | US20040161993A1 | Inorganic fiber insulation made from glass fibers and polymer bonding fibers | 112 |
| 6 | US4630572A | Boiling liquid cooling system for internal combustion engines | 107 |
| 7 | US6557313B1 | Blanket insulation with reflective sheet and air space | 103 |
| 8 | WO2011044490A1 | BIO-based binders for insulation and non-woven mats | 102 |
| 9 | US5545453A | Conformable insulation assembly | 102 |
| 10 | US5439549A | Double edged pressure sensitive folded tape application apparatus | 101 |
Citation counts reflect influence within the searched corpus and skew toward older filings; treat them as a signal of foundational status, not current market relevance.
Each row carries its publication number; clicking a row searches Eureka by that number.
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Three figures from this dataset carry direct implications for where new filings are likely to succeed and where they are likely to run into dense prior art.
Leadership is real but not absolute
The top five assignees combined hold 265 of the 712 records in scope, and the top ten extend that to 52.0%. That leaves roughly half the field distributed across a long tail of smaller filers, which is meaningful headroom for a new entrant with a genuinely differentiated drainage or membrane approach.
Recent momentum is real, not an artefact
Filings rose from 6 in 2021 to 21 in 2024 — the last year in this dataset that can be treated as a complete filing year given typical 18-month publication lag. That trajectory suggests renewed commercial interest in cabin moisture control rather than a mature, settled field.
Aerospace-specific claims are a minority
Building-structure (E04B) filings outnumber aeroplane-specific (B64C) filings by more than five to one within this corpus. Filers targeting aircraft cabins should expect to search — and potentially license around — general insulation and construction art, not just aerospace patents.
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to aircraft cabin humidity and condensation control, with the prior art for and against each one.
Who holds the claim space
The assignee ranking spans 100 companies counted across the 712 records in scope. Leadership sits with a mix of building-insulation manufacturers and Boeing, with recent-year filing activity flat across the named leaders in the latest reported year.
Insulation manufacturers anchor the top of the ranking
The leading assignee holds 122 records, well ahead of the fifth-place holder at 27 and tenth place at 16 — a steep drop-off that marks this as a leader-plus-long-tail field rather than an evenly split one.
Collaboration is limited and concentrated
Only ten co-assignee pairings appear across the dataset, and the strongest of these links two of the same insulation-focused organisations that also lead the individual ranking, suggesting internal group filing rather than broad cross-company partnership.
Named leaders show no latest-year filings
Every one of the leading assignees shows zero filings in the latest reported year, including year-over-year drops of -100% for two of them. Given the 18-month publication lag, this likely reflects reporting delay rather than an actual halt in R&D activity.
| Assignee | Recent year | YoY |
|---|---|---|
| Owens Corning Intellectual Capital LLC | 0 | -100% |
| CertainTeed Corp | 0 | — |
| Johns Manville International Inc | 0 | — |
| The Boeing Company | 0 | — |
| Cargill Inc | 0 | -100% |
| BlueScope Buildings North America Inc | 0 | — |
| The University Court of the University of Edinburgh | 0 | — |
| CIUPERCA ROMEO ILARIAN | 0 | — |
Where to take this analysis
The dataset points to a field still gaining filing momentum but structurally rooted in general insulation and materials art rather than aerospace-only engineering.
Map claim overlap before filing
With E04B and B32B classes covering nearly half the records between them, a new cabin humidity filing should be checked against building-insulation and laminate prior art, not just aerospace databases.
Explore the technology in Eureka →Watch the long tail for emerging entrants
With just over half of records held outside the top ten assignees, smaller filers and newer entrants are active in this space; tracking their filings early can flag competitive shifts before they show up in citation counts.
Set up assignee tracking in Eureka →Common questions about this landscape
The dataset's assignee ranking spans 100 companies across 712 records, with the leading assignee holding 122 records — far ahead of the fifth-place holder at 27 and tenth place at 16. The top five combined account for 37.2% of all records in scope, and the top ten account for 52.0%. The leadership tier includes both building-insulation manufacturers and Boeing, reflecting how much of this art is shared with general construction and materials engineering rather than being aerospace-exclusive.
Filing activity grew sharply on a complete-year basis, rising from 6 filings in 2021 to 21 in 2024, a 250% increase. Earlier activity peaked at 52 filings in 2020 before dipping. The apparent decline shown in 2025 and 2026 data is not a real slowdown — publication typically lags filing by around 18 months, so the most recent one to two years in any patent dataset are always undercounted.
Building-structure claims under IPC class E04B are the largest single category at 34.0% of the 712 records, followed by layered laminates (B32B) at 15.7% and nonwovens/felts (D04H) at 14.3%. Aircraft-specific classifications such as B64C (aeroplanes and helicopters) make up only 6.2% of records, meaning most of the claim density in this space originates in general insulation, roofing and materials engineering rather than airframe-specific design.
With roughly half of all records held outside the top ten assignees, and with aerospace-specific classifications underrepresented relative to general building-materials classes, there is room for claims that tie moisture-control mechanisms explicitly to cabin-specific constraints such as pressurisation cycling or fuselage penetration points. Sub-areas such as membrane dehumidifier integration, dew-point sensing linked to drainage routing, and microbial-growth-resistant condensate surfaces show thinner overlap with the dominant insulation cluster and are worth checking for open claim space before filing.
US6670011B2, assigned to Johns Manville International and granted in 2003, claims a pre-cut fibrous insulation blanket with separable connector sections that allow field-cutting to fit variable cavity widths. New filings on insulation blankets that rely on similar pre-scored or hand-separable sectioning for custom-fit installation should assess this patent's claim scope carefully, particularly if the connector or cutting mechanism is structurally similar. It is one of several older, heavily cited filings in this dataset that anchor prior art in the insulation-blanket sub-area.
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Disclaimer. This page is generated from Patsnap Eureka data drawn from a limited snapshot of global patent and scientific-literature records, and is provided for general information and reference only.
Patent data carries inherent limitations: recent filings (typically the most recent 18–24 months) are under-counted due to standard publication lag; counts may be reported at either a patent-family or a patent-record basis and are not always directly comparable; classification, applicant-name, and citation data may contain errors, duplicates, or omissions; and the underlying search query defines and constrains the scope shown. As a result, the analysis may be incomplete or inaccurate and may not reflect the full technology landscape.
Nothing on this page constitutes an exhaustive prior-art, novelty, freedom-to-operate, or validity search, nor does it constitute legal, financial, investment, or professional advice, and it should not be relied upon as such. Any patent, commercial, or strategic decision should be verified independently and reviewed with qualified patent, legal, and domain professionals. Patsnap makes no warranties, express or implied, as to the accuracy, completeness, or fitness for any particular purpose of the information presented.
Machine translation. Assignee and organisation names originally recorded in Chinese, Japanese or Korean have been rendered into English by an AI translation step so that the tables stay readable. These renderings are best-effort and may not match a company’s registered English name; the original name is what the underlying patent record carries, and it is what any Eureka query launched from this page uses.