Airport Hydrogen Refuelling Patents: Who Leads, Where the Gaps Are 2026
Airport Hydrogen Refuelling Infrastructure Patents: Who Leads, Where the Gaps Are
58.2% of all 55 records sit with just five assignees, yet the tenth-ranked filer holds only 2 records — a sharp drop-off past the leading group. Filings rose from zero in 2017 to a peak of 13 in 2021, then fell to 5 by 2024 — a documented -62% move across that span. Because publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, the 2025 and 2026 counts are still incomplete and should not be read as a continued decline.
- 1SINGLE BUOY MOORINGS INC13
- 2HONDA MOTOR CO LTD6
- 3CHART INC5
- 4SHANGHAI HYMASTER TECH CO LTD4
- 5KALSI ENGINEERING INC4
See the full airport hydrogen refuelling infrastructure 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
How many patents cover airport hydrogen refuelling infrastructure?
The dataset in scope contains 55 published records spanning 2015 through the 2026 data cut-off, all matched against search terms covering liquid hydrogen transfer, cryogenic transfer lines, boil-off recovery, flow-rate control, electrostatic grounding, vapour return lines and automated coupling connections. These 55 records also form the complete assignee ranking, so every figure quoted for concentration or leadership is a share of that same total. Because publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, the true count for 2025 and 2026 filings will rise as more applications publish.
Who are the leading patent holders in liquid hydrogen refuelling technology?
The ranking covers 28 companies, with the leader holding 13 of the 55 records in scope and the top five combined holding 32 records, or 58.2% of the total. That leaves a long tail: the tenth-ranked entrant holds only 2 records, so beyond the leading handful the field is held by companies with a handful of filings each. This is a ranked list drawn directly from the data endpoint, not a curated top-50 or top-100, so smaller or newer filers can and do appear in it.
Is the technology shifting toward storage or toward control systems?
Storage and pressure-vessel engineering, classified under F17C, still accounts for just over half of the 55 records in scope and includes the most-cited single document in the dataset. Newer records, including the representative fault-detection patent filed in mid-2025, lean toward control and monitoring methods such as cumulative-sum anomaly detection rather than tank or coupling hardware. That pattern — older filings concentrated in storage hardware, newer filings drifting toward software-based monitoring — is visible in the data but should be read cautiously given the 18-month publication lag on the most recent years.
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 Airport Hydrogen Refuelling Infrastructure 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.