Carbon Fiber Textile Patents: Leaders, Trends & White Space 2026
A patent landscape analysis of carbon fiber textile filings from 2015-2026, covering assignee concentration, filing trends, IPC composition, and the most-cited prior art.
Filing growth = 2021 (2 records) → 2024 (3); 2024 is the last year we treat as complete. Top-5 share = the 5 largest assignees ÷ all 226 records in scope (CR5), not the ranked leaders only.
What the carbon fiber textile patent record shows
Carbon fiber textile patenting sits at the junction of fibre chemistry and fabric construction: claims range from how the filament itself is made and treated to how it is woven, felted, or laminated into a usable material. The scope here spans 226 published records from 2015 onward, drawn from IPC classes covering filament and fibre features, woven fabrics, nonwovens, and textile chemical treatment. Family counts, not raw document counts, drive the assignee ranking, which flattens the effect of continuation filings and multi-jurisdiction duplicates.
The receiving-office spread points to where applicants have actually sought protection rather than just where R&D happens: the United States leads, followed by Europe and South Korea, with WIPO PCT filings indicating cross-border ambition and Canada and Japan rounding out a smaller but active tail.
Filing trend, technology mix and jurisdiction spread
Three views of the same 226-record dataset: how filing volume has moved year over year, which IPC subclasses carry the most claim density, and where applicants have chosen to seek protection.
A slow climb with a mid-decade peak
Annual filings rose from 3 records in 2017 to a peak of 10 in 2022, then continued at a lower but still-positive pace; 2021 to 2024 shows +50% growth. The final one or two years in any such trend read low because publication lags filing by roughly 18 months — that is a reporting artefact, not evidence of a slowdown.
Publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, so 2025 onwards are still filling in. Growth rates on this page therefore end at 2024; running them to the last bar would understate the field.
Fibre chemistry outweighs fabric construction
D01F (chemical filament and fibre features) appears in 39.8% of the 226 records in scope, ahead of D03D woven fabrics at 33.6% and D04H nonwovens and D06M chemical treatment tied at 22.6% each. Because a single record can carry several IPC codes, these shares sum to more than 100% — the composition says where claim attention has landed, not how many distinct inventions exist.
Shares are the percentage of the 226 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
Go deeper on Carbon Fiber Textile Patent Landscape with Eureka
This page is one run against one query. Ask Eureka your own question about carbon fiber textile patent landscape and every answer comes back with the patent numbers behind it.
Try EurekaThe most-cited prior art and a representative early filing
US4457345A — Blended yarn containing active carbon staple fibers, and fabric woven therefrom
A yarn prepared from a mixture of textile staple fibers and active carbon staple fibers, 5 to 75% by weight of the latter, made by chopping active carbon monofilaments into staple fibers, blending them with textile staple fibers in a liquid vehicle, then spinning to yarn usable in weaving fabrics with tensile strengths up to 2000 newtons per 5 centimetres — suited to filters and protective suits.Filed 1984, this record predates the modern composite-focused wave of carbon fiber textile patenting and establishes an early claim on blending active carbon fibers into conventional yarn for filtration and protective end uses.
View full filing details| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | WO1996018688A1 | Carbon black reacted with diazonium salts and products | 373 |
| 2 | US5900029A | Reaction of carbon black with diazonium salts, resultant carbon black products and their uses | 338 |
| 3 | US5681645A | Flat elastomeric nonwoven laminates | 112 |
| 4 | US6083857A | Surface element | 95 |
| 5 | US20120157904A1 | Textile fabric | 83 |
| 6 | US4931358A | Fiber-reinforced thermoplastic panels | 78 |
| 7 | US5731065A | Multilayered, textile, gas-permeable filter material against toxic chemical substances | 62 |
| 8 | US20060264136A1 | Fabric with high fire-resistant properties | 56 |
| 9 | US20050034629A1 | Reaction of carbon black with diazonium salts, resultant carbon black products and their uses | 55 |
| 10 | WO1996038620A1 | Flat elastomeric nonwoven laminates | 53 |
Citation counts accumulate over time, so older records such as the two 1990s carbon-black filings dominate this table by construction — treat them as markers of foundational influence, not current relevance.
Each row carries its publication number; clicking a row searches Eureka by that number.
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Four read-throughs of the concentration, growth and composition figures, aimed at where a new filer or licensing team should look first.
The top of the field is tight, the rest is thin
The leading assignee holds 29 records outright, and the top 5 combined take 33.6% of all 226 records in scope. Below that the ranking drops off quickly — fifth place holds 6 records and tenth place holds 5 — which means most of the 100 ranked entities are single- or double-digit filers rather than repeat strategic players.
Growth is real but the peak year is behind us
Filings rose from 2 in 2021 to 3 in 2024, a +50% increase over that span, with an interim peak of 10 records in 2022. Any read of 2025-2026 as a decline is premature: publication lag of roughly 18 months means those years are still filling in.
Fibre chemistry, not fabric structure, carries the most claims
D01F chemical filament and fibre features appears in 39.8% of the 226 records, ahead of D03D woven fabrics at 33.6%. Nonwovens (D04H) and chemical treatment (D06M) are tied at 22.6% each, suggesting fibre-level modification is the more contested layer of the stack compared with downstream fabric construction.
Joint filing is rare in this field
Only three co-assignee pairs appear across the dataset, the strongest linking two university research groups on 6 shared records. That scarcity suggests most carbon fiber textile IP is developed and held by single entities rather than through formal joint-filing partnerships.
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to carbon fiber textile patent landscape, with the prior art for and against each one.
| Assignee | Co-assignee | Shared families |
|---|---|---|
| North Carolina State University | University of Maryland | 6 |
| Q2 ROMA SRL | CHIANTESE GENNARO | 2 |
| SABIC Global Technologies B.V. | HOSSAN ROBERT JOHN | 1 |
The strongest co-assignee link pairs two university groups across 6 records, with two commercial pairings each appearing once or twice — evidence of occasional academic-industry or academic-academic collaboration rather than a broad partnership network.
Turning this landscape into a filing or freedom-to-operate decision
The figures above establish where claim density sits and who holds it; the next step is testing a specific concept against that ground.
Map a candidate claim against the cited prior art
Before drafting, run a candidate claim against the most-cited records in this set — several date to the 1990s and still anchor citation chains in carbon-black and nonwoven fabric treatments.
Explore prior art in EurekaWatch the fibre-chemistry branch
D01F carries the highest record share in this dataset; a team filing into fibre-level modification should expect denser prior art than in fabric construction classes.
Run a white space search in EurekaCheck assignee activity before approaching a licence
With filings concentrated among a small set of repeat assignees and a long tail of single-filing entrants, confirm which category a target company falls into before opening licensing talks.
Screen assignees in EurekaCommon questions about carbon fiber textile patents
The leading assignee in this dataset holds 29 of the 226 records in scope, well ahead of the rest of the ranked field. The top 5 assignees combined account for 33.6% of all 226 records, but the ranking drops off quickly after that — fifth place holds only 6 records and tenth place holds 5. That pattern means one or two entities have built a meaningful position while the remainder of the 100 ranked companies are mostly single- or low-digit filers rather than sustained programmes.
Filing grew +50% from 2021 (2 records) to 2024 (3 records), with an interim peak of 10 records in 2022. It would be a mistake to read the lower counts in 2025 and 2026 as a slowdown, because publication typically lags actual filing by around 18 months, so the most recent one to two years in any patent dataset are always undercounted at the time of publication. 2024 is the most recent year that can be treated as a reasonably complete data point.
Chemical filament and fibre features (IPC class D01F) appear in 39.8% of the 226 records in scope, making it the most heavily claimed area, ahead of woven fabrics and weaving (D03D) at 33.6%. Nonwovens and felts (D04H) and textile chemical treatment (D06M) are tied at 22.6% each. Because records often carry more than one IPC code, these figures describe where claim attention concentrates rather than a strict count of distinct inventions, and they suggest fibre-level chemistry is the more contested layer relative to fabric construction.
Composition shares point to relative gaps rather than empty space: D21H (pulp and paper compositions) and B32B (layered products and laminates) each sit below 15% of the 226 records, notably lower than the fibre-chemistry and weaving classes above them. A first filer targeting lamination or paper-composite integration with carbon fiber textiles would be working against a thinner base of existing claims than someone filing into D01F or D03D, though thinner claim density does not by itself confirm the area is commercially proven.
Two 1990s filings on reacting carbon black with diazonium salts carry the highest citation counts in this dataset, at 373 and 338 citations respectively, followed by a nonwoven laminate patent and two fabric/surface-element filings in the 80-to-115 range. High citation counts in an older record are a sign of foundational influence within the searched corpus rather than proof that the underlying technology is still the best available option — newer filings simply have not had time to accumulate citations at the same rate.
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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.