Cabin Monuments and Galley Design Patents: Top Filers & Trends 2026
- One filer dominates. a single assignee holds 413 of the 757 records in scope, and the top five together account for 81.4% of all filings.
- Filing has cooled from its 2020 peak. activity peaked at 54 records in 2020 and fell -53% from 2021 (53) to 2024 (25), the last year publication lag lets us read cleanly.
- Aircraft equipment claims dominate the composition. B64D covers 73.6% of records, while cooling-specific classes F25D and F25B sit far behind at 19.3% and 10.8%.
Filing growth compares 2021 (53 records) with 2024 (25) — 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 757 records in scope (CR5), not by the ranked leaders only.
What this landscape covers
Cabin monuments and galley design patents cover the hardware that turns an aircraft interior into a working kitchen and storage system: galley ovens, air chillers, trolley retention and latch mechanisms, sandwich-panel construction, and the tie-rod attachments that hold monuments to the airframe. This search combines 757 published records filed between 2015 and mid-2026 that sit at the intersection of galley hardware and the mechanical or thermal systems that make it function in a pressurised, weight-constrained cabin.
The field reads as mature and concentrated rather than fragmented. A handful of legacy aerospace interiors suppliers built the foundational chiller and latch patents years ago, and the filing trend has been declining from a 2020 peak — a pattern consistent with an incumbent-held technology space rather than one still being actively opened up.
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Filing trends and technology composition
Two views of the same 757-record dataset: how filing activity has moved year over year, and which IPC subclasses the records actually claim into.
Filing trend, 2017-2026
Filings rose to a peak of 54 records in 2020, then declined -53% from 53 records in 2021 to 25 in 2024 — the most recent year unaffected by publication lag. 2025 and 2026 figures are still incomplete and should not be read as a continued decline.
IPC subclass composition
B64D (aircraft equipment) touches 73.6% of the 757 records, confirming this is fundamentally an airframe-integration problem. Thermal management (F25D, F25B) and fastening/locking classes (E05C, E05B) each cover a tenth or less of records, marking them as narrower, more specialised claim territory rather than the field's core.
Shares are the percentage of the 757 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
Go deeper on Cabin Monuments and Galley Design with Eureka
This page is one run against one query. Ask Eureka your own question about cabin monuments and galley design and every answer comes back with the patent numbers behind it.
Try EurekaMost-cited prior art in this space
US9062909B2 — Wall-mounted point-of-use air chiller for aircraft galley cart compartment
A point-of-use air chiller unit for an aircraft galley cart compartment comprising a generally flattened rectangular case with two main surfaces of substantially larger area than the remaining four, housing a condenser, compressor, evaporator and evaporator fan connected in standard refrigeration configuration, arranged so a plane parallel to the main surfaces passes through all four components.Filed by B/E Aerospace, Inc., published 2015-06-23.
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | US20050121978A1 | Aircraft galley systems and methods for managing electric power for aircraft galley systems | 150 |
| 2 | US20050210910A1 | Cooling system for a commercial aircraft galley | 145 |
| 3 | US5491979A | Apparatus for cooling food stuffs, especially in an aircraft | 134 |
| 4 | US4361014A | Panel air chiller | 121 |
| 5 | US20100224726A1 | Wall-mounted point-of-use air chiller for aircraft galley cart compartment | 101 |
| 6 | US20130047657A1 | Reconfigurable Chilled Air Outlet for an Aircraft Galley Chiller | 98 |
| 7 | US20100193629A1 | Localized utility power system for aircraft | 72 |
| 8 | US7231778B2 | Cooling system for a commercial aircraft galley | 71 |
| 9 | US5465660A | Aircraft trash collection and compacting apparatus | 69 |
| 10 | US20100050665A1 | Method and apparatus for maintaining a uniform temperature in a refrigeration system | 67 |
Citation counts favour older filings simply because they have had longer to accumulate citations inside this corpus — read them as signals of influence on the field's vocabulary, not as a ranking of current relevance.
Each row carries its publication number; clicking a row searches Eureka by that number.
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Three patterns stand out once family counts, trend and technology composition are read together.
This is an incumbent-held field
The leading assignee alone holds 413 records, and the top five combined account for 81.4% of all 757 records in scope. A new entrant is not filing into open space at the core of galley hardware — it is filing around a small number of dominant portfolios.
Activity has cooled from its 2020 peak
Filings peaked at 54 records in 2020 and dropped -53% from 53 records in 2021 to 25 in 2024, the last year clean of publication lag. That decline sits alongside near-zero recent-year activity across several of the largest legacy assignees.
Thermal and fastening claims are the narrower routes
B64D dominates the composition, but cooling-specific classes F25D (19.3%) and F25B (10.8%), plus fastening classes E05C (5.3%) and E05B (5.0%), represent smaller, more specialised pockets where claim density is lower.
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to cabin monuments and galley design, with the prior art for and against each one.
| Assignee | Co-assignee | Shared families |
|---|---|---|
| BE Aerospace Inc | LU QIAO | 5 |
| BE Aerospace Inc | BURD PETER JOHN LESLIE | 5 |
| Bombardier Inc | Learjet Inc | 5 |
| MAG Aerospace Industries LLC | Commissariat à l'Energie Atomique et aux Energies Alternatives (CEA) | 4 |
| BE Aerospace Inc | WHISLER STEVEN | 3 |
| BE Aerospace Inc | OSWALD IAN | 3 |
| BE Aerospace Inc | NGUYEN WILLIAM H | 2 |
| BE Aerospace Inc | IMANI VANDAUD M | 2 |
Co-assignee pairs are limited to 10 across the dataset, with the strongest pairs linking a lead assignee to individual named inventors — indicating in-house engineering credit more than cross-company joint development.
Who holds the portfolios
The ranking covers 80 companies across all 757 records — not a top-50 or top-100 cut, but the complete set the data endpoint returns. Filing here is heavily front-loaded toward a small number of legacy aerospace interiors suppliers.
A single assignee dominates the ranking
The top-ranked assignee holds 413 of 757 records — well over half the field on its own. This scale reflects decades of galley and monument hardware development concentrated in one supplier lineage.
A sharp drop after the leaders
Fifth place holds 17 records and tenth place holds 12 — a steep fall-off from the leader that shows most of the remaining 75 ranked companies hold only a handful of families each.
Legacy leaders have gone quiet recently
Several of the largest historical filers show 0 records in the latest year and -100% year-over-year change, consistent with the broader post-2021 decline rather than any single company's exit.
| Assignee | Recent year | YoY |
|---|---|---|
| BE Aerospace Inc | 0 | -100% |
| Airbus Operations GmbH | 0 | -100% |
| The Boeing Co | 0 | -100% |
| Koninklijke Fabriek Inventum | 0 | — |
| MAG Aerospace Industries LLC | 0 | — |
| Rockwell Collins Inc | 0 | — |
| BE Aerospace (UK) Ltd | 0 | — |
| BE Intellectual Property Inc | 0 | — |
Where to take this analysis
The dataset points to a concentrated, cooling field with narrow pockets of open claim space. Turning that into a filing or freedom-to-operate decision means going deeper on specific branches.
Map claims against the leader's portfolio
With one assignee holding 413 of 757 records, any new filing in core galley chiller or latch mechanisms should start with a claim chart against that portfolio specifically, not the field average.
Explore assignee portfolios in EurekaTest white space in thermal and fastening classes
F25D, F25B, E05C and E05B each cover a tenth or less of the 757 records. These narrower classes are where a differentiated claim is more likely to clear prior art cleanly.
Run a white space search in EurekaCommon questions on cabin monument and galley patents
One assignee holds 413 of the 757 records in this dataset, making it the clear leader by a wide margin. The top five assignees combined account for 81.4% of all 757 records, and the top ten reach 91.0%. This means the field is highly concentrated: most of the 80 ranked companies hold only a small number of families each, with a sharp drop from 17 records at fifth place down to 12 at tenth.
Filing peaked at 54 records in 2020 and has declined since, falling -53% from 53 records in 2021 to 25 records in 2024. Because publication typically lags filing by around 18 months, 2025 and 2026 figures in this dataset are still incomplete and should not be read as confirming a continued drop. Based on the complete years through 2024, the trend is a cooling from an early-2020s peak rather than a field in early growth.
The dataset combines search terms around galley ovens, air chillers, trolley retention, latch mechanisms, sandwich panels and tie-rod attachments. By IPC subclass, B64D (aircraft equipment) touches 73.6% of the 757 records, making it the dominant classification. Thermal management classes F25D and F25B cover 19.3% and 10.8% respectively, while fastening and locking classes E05C and E05B each sit around 5%, marking them as narrower specialisations within the broader galley hardware field.
US9062909B2, assigned to B/E Aerospace and published in 2015, claims a wall-mounted point-of-use air chiller for an aircraft galley cart compartment. Its distinguishing feature is a flattened rectangular case where the condenser, compressor, evaporator and evaporator fan all sit on a single plane parallel to the case's two largest surfaces. It is a representative record for how galley chiller patents in this space claim compact, wall-integrated thermal hardware rather than standalone refrigeration units.
The evidence points to narrower classes as the more open territory: fastening and locking (E05C, E05B) and furniture-adjacent claims (A47B) each cover only around 5% of the 757 records, far below the 73.6% saturation in core aircraft-equipment claims. Sub-areas like modular tie-rod attachment interfaces, trolley retention sensing, lightweight sandwich-panel joinery, and smart latch diagnostics show comparatively thin filing density. That said, thin density in a dataset built from a specific search string does not guarantee true white space — it should be verified with a targeted claim search before committing engineering resources.
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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.