Aluminum-Lithium Alloy Heat Treatment Patents: Who Leads, Gaps 2026
- 188 families, one 2025 peak. Filing activity stayed flat through the 2015-2022 period before spiking to 19 filings in 2025, the highest single year in the dataset.
- China now leads filing volume. 74 of the tracked records route through the Chinese receiving office, more than the EPO and US combined among the next two largest offices.
- Foundational aging claims are decades old. The five most-cited records date mostly to 1988-1994, meaning the highest-influence claims on two-step aging to T8 temper predate most active filers by decades.
Filing growth compares 2021 (6 records) with 2024 (14) — 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 188 records in scope (CR5), not by the ranked leaders only.
What this landscape covers
Aluminum-lithium alloys trade density for strength, and the property depends almost entirely on how the alloy is heat treated after casting or forming. This landscape tracks patent families claiming solution heat treatment, aging treatment, T8 temper processing and precipitation hardening specifically for Al-Li systems, drawing on IPC classes for non-ferrous metal treatment and alloy composition.
The 188 families in this search span 2015 through the mid-2026 cut-off, with foundational claims from the late 1980s and early 1990s still carrying the heaviest citation weight even as filing activity has recently shifted toward Chinese assignees and newer alloy compositions.
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Filing trends and technology composition
Filings in this search string run from 2015 through the mid-2026 cut-off, with the most recent year necessarily undercounted because publication lags filing by roughly 18 months.
A flat-to-declining filing curve with one recent peak
Annual filings moved from 3 in 2017 to a midpoint of 6 in 2022, then rose to a peak of 19 in 2025 — the growth pattern is uneven rather than steadily compounding, and the partial 2026 count should not be read as a drop-off.
Concentrated in non-ferrous treatment and alloy composition
C22F (non-ferrous metal treatment) and C22C (alloys) dominate the IPC composition at 183 and 132 records respectively, out of 188 total; heat treatment proper (C21D) and the forming classes (rolling, casting, forging, extrusion) each carry a much smaller share, marking them as comparatively thin claim territory.
Shares are the percentage of the 188 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
Go deeper on Aluminum-Lithium Alloy Heat Treatment with Eureka
This page is one run against one query. Ask Eureka your own question about aluminum-lithium alloy heat treatment and every answer comes back with the patent numbers behind it.
Try EurekaKey patents shaping the claim landscape
Method to increase the toughness of aluminum-lithium alloys at cryogenic temperatures (US7105067B2)
A method to increase the toughness of the aluminum-lithium alloy C458 and similar alloys at cryogenic temperatures above their room temperature toughness is provided. Increasing the cryogenic toughness of the aluminum-lithium alloy C458 allows the use of alloy C458 for cryogenic tanks, for example for launch vehicles in the aerospace industry. A two-step aging treatment for alloy C458 is provided, disclosing a specific set of times and temperatures to age the alloy to T8 temper that results in higher toughness at cryogenic temperatures compared to room temperature.Filed by The Boeing Company, granted 2006-09-12 — a narrow, application-specific layer on top of the older two-step aging lineage.
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | US5198045A | Low density high strength Al-Li alloy | 109 |
| 2 | US4816087A | Process for producing duplex mode recrystallized high strength aluminum-lithium alloy products with high frac… | 75 |
| 3 | US4861391A | Aluminum alloy two-step aging method and article | 56 |
| 4 | WO2021008428A1 | 一种超高强铝锂合金及其制备方法 | 47 |
| 5 | US5389165A | Low density, high strength Al-Li alloy having high toughness at elevated temperatures | 45 |
| 6 | CN110423927A | 一种超高强铝锂合金及其制备方法 | 37 |
| 7 | US4973522A | Aluminum alloy composites | 35 |
| 8 | CN105648283A | 低密度、高刚度铸造铝锂合金及其制备方法 | 33 |
| 9 | US5383986A | Method of improving transverse direction mechanical properties of aluminum-lithium alloy wrought product usin… | 33 |
| 10 | WO1998033947A1 | Method of improving fracture toughness in aluminum-lithium alloys | 31 |
Citation counts are drawn from the searched corpus and weight toward older filings; treat them as a measure of historical influence, not current commercial relevance.
Patent titles are shown in the language they were filed in, not translated, so that each record stays verifiable against the original filing — a translated title will not match in Eureka or in any national register. Each row carries its publication number; clicking a row searches Eureka by that number.
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Three patterns stand out once the family-level data is broken down by IPC subclass, receiving office and citation weight.
Growth is a recent spike, not a steady climb
Filings sat near flat through the mid-2010s and early 2020s before jumping to a 2025 peak of 19, with the 2026 partial-year figure not yet comparable given publication lag.
Claim space is concentrated in two IPC classes
C22F (non-ferrous treatment) and C22C (alloys) together account for the large majority of records, leaving heat treatment proper and the forming classes comparatively underrepresented.
China is now the largest single filing venue
China's 74 records outpace the EPO's 39 and the US's 27, indicating that recent filing activity is increasingly directed at the Chinese market alongside traditional Western venues.
Citation weight sits with 1988-1994 filings
The highest-cited records in the corpus are all more than two decades old, a reminder that citation counts inside a bounded search favour older filings and should be read as historical influence rather than current relevance.
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to aluminum-lithium alloy heat treatment, with the prior art for and against each one.
Who holds the claim space
Ownership splits between the legacy US aerospace-metals lineage that built the foundational two-step aging claims and a newer group of Chinese universities and materials firms entering with alloy-specific filings.
The oldest, most-cited claim cluster
Reynolds Metals and Martin Marietta co-filed together on the strongest co-assignee pair in the dataset, sitting alongside Alcoa in the group that holds the highest-citation two-step aging and duplex-mode recrystallization patents.
A narrower, application-specific layer
Boeing's cryogenic-toughness aging patent sits downstream of the legacy lineage, claiming a specific aging recipe for cryogenic tank applications rather than competing on the base two-step method.
Universities driving recent activity
Chinese universities and materials companies account for the more recent filing activity in this set, with compositional and process claims narrower in scope than the legacy aerospace patents.
| Assignee | Recent year | YoY |
|---|---|---|
| Shanghai Jiao Tong University | 1 | — |
| Reynolds Metals Company | 0 | — |
| Central South University | 0 | -100% |
| Alcoa Inc. | 0 | — |
| Kaiser Aluminum Corporation | 0 | — |
| The Boeing Company | 0 | — |
| Honeywell International Inc. | 0 | — |
| Chongqing University of Arts and Sciences | 0 | — |
Where to go from this landscape
This page gives the shape of the field. Confirming freedom to operate or scoping a new filing requires drilling into specific claims and assignees.
Check claim scope against a specific alloy grade
The dataset shows citation weight concentrated in a handful of 1980s-1990s patents; confirming whether your alloy composition and aging window fall inside their claims needs a full-text claim comparison.
Compare claims in EurekaTrack the recent shift toward Chinese filers
Receiving-office volume has moved toward China; monitoring new filings from universities and materials firms there can flag emerging competitors before they scale.
Set up monitoring in EurekaScope a filing in an under-claimed branch
Forming-adjacent classes like extrusion and forging carry far fewer records than the core aging claims, which may leave room for a narrower, well-drafted claim.
Explore white space in EurekaFrequently asked questions
T8 temper refers to a solution heat treatment followed by cold work and then artificial aging, and the patents in this dataset that reference T8 typically claim a specific two-step aging schedule rather than a single aging step. Standard single-step aging patents in this corpus are older and carry lower citation counts than the two-step T8 lineage. In practice, the distinction matters for infringement analysis because claims are often written around the exact time-temperature sequence used to reach T8, not the temper designation itself.
The most-cited records in this dataset trace back to the Alcoa, Reynolds Metals and Martin Marietta lineage from the late 1980s and early 1990s, with US5198045A alone cited 109 times. Boeing holds a later, narrower cryogenic-toughness aging patent that builds on that earlier art rather than competing with it directly. More recent high-citation activity, including a 2021 PCT filing on ultra-high-strength Al-Li alloys, shows Chinese assignees entering the same claim space with newer compositions.
The dataset shows a peak of 19 filings in 2025 against a much flatter baseline earlier in the period, but any interpretation of a peak this recent should account for publication lag — patents filed in 2025 may still be entering the record after the 2026-07-31 cut-off, and 2026 itself is only partially represented. What the peak does reliably show is renewed filing activity concentrated in the C22F and C22C classes rather than a broad expansion across all related IPC codes.
China leads the receiving-office counts in this dataset with 74 records, ahead of the European Patent Office at 39 and the United States at 27, with Canada, WIPO/PCT and Japan trailing further behind. That distribution suggests filers are pursuing protection in China and Europe alongside the US rather than filing predominantly in one jurisdiction. For companies planning where to seek their own protection, the receiving-office spread is a reasonable proxy for where competitors expect commercial activity.
Yes — the IPC composition shows heavy concentration in non-ferrous treatment (C22F) and alloy composition (C22C) claims, while forming-adjacent classes like extrusion, forging and casting carry only a handful of records each. That gap between how much aging/heat-treatment art exists and how little of it is tied to a specific forming operation is where a narrower, commercially specific claim is more likely to clear prior art. It is a claim-density gap, not evidence that those forming routes are technically unworkable.
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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.