Filing in this space is concentrated: the leading assignee holds 396 records, well ahead of the fifth-place filer at 219 and the tenth-place filer at 98. Together the top five assignees account for 51.4% of all 2,778 records in scope, and the top ten account for 73.7%. That means a small group of tooling, drilling and superabrasives companies controls most of the documented grade chemistry and processing claims, so competitive monitoring should focus there first rather than across the full 100-company ranking.

Filing peaked at 98 records in 2019 and has since declined; the most recent complete comparison, 2021 to 2024, shows a 34% drop from 53 to 35 records. This looks more like a maturing claim space than a collapsing one, since heavy early filing tends to occupy the obvious grade compositions and processing windows first. The 2025 and 2026 figures in the dataset are still incomplete because publication typically lags filing by around 18 months, so they should not yet be read as continued decline.

C22C (alloys) is the largest single classification, appearing in 45.8% of the 2,778 records, followed by E21B (earth and rock drilling) at 35.9% and B22F (powder metallurgy) at 33.3%. Coating and surface deposition, turning and boring, ceramics, and grinding tools each cover smaller but still meaningful shares. Because records often carry multiple IPC classes, these figures overlap rather than sum to 100%, reflecting how grade development claims typically span alloy chemistry, processing and end-use application together.