Centrifugal Pump Modularity Patents: Leaders, Trends & Gaps 2026
- Filing activity peaked in 2019 at 14 families and has since flattened rather than continuing to climb, suggesting the core modular-impeller claim space is largely staked out.
- F04D pump classifications dominate at 54 records but H02K electric motor filings (27) and E21B drilling-well filings (21) show modularity claims are increasingly written around motor integration and downhole submersible pump use, not the pump housing alone.
- The most-cited record in the set is a 1968-era cleaning apparatus patent cited 83 times — a reminder that citation weight here reflects decades of prior-art accumulation, not which claims are commercially live today.
What this landscape covers
This landscape tracks patent families where centrifugal pump, pump impeller or related terms intersect with modular pump design, standardized components or modular impeller claims. The scope spans conventional industrial pumping through to electric submersible pump (ESP) assemblies used in wells, and extends into adjacent mechanical subsystems — motors, couplings, bearings and gearing — that get bundled into modular pump claims.
Eighty-two families is a modest corpus for a mechanical engineering field this broad, which means individual assignees and even individual patents can carry outsized weight in the ranking. Publication lags filing by roughly eighteen months, so the flat-to-declining trend into the most recent years understates whatever filing is already in the pipeline.
Filing trend and technology composition
Two views of the same 82-family corpus: the filing trend by year, and the IPC subclasses those families fall into.
Filing trend, 2015-2026
Filings rose to a peak of 14 families in 2019, sat near that level through the middle of the period (12 in 2022), and show no clear upward trajectory into the most recent partial year — consistent with a claim space that filled in early and has not reopened.
IPC subclass composition
F04D (non-positive-displacement pumps) accounts for the largest single share at 54 records, well ahead of H02K electric motors (27) and E21B well drilling (21). Smaller counts in F16C shaft/bearing/coupling hardware, A61M body-fluid devices, F03B hydraulic machines, F16H gearing and F04B positive-displacement pumps show modularity claims spreading into mechanically adjacent subsystems rather than staying confined to the pump body itself.
Shares are the percentage of the 82 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
Go deeper on Centrifugal Pump Modularity and Standardization with Eureka
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Try EurekaMost-cited and representative filings
Mammalian body implantable fluid flow influencing device
A modular impeller for an implantable pump built from an impeller hub module and a separate impeller vane module, deliverable to a site inside the body via catheter in an unassembled configuration and mated into an assembled configuration once in place.Filed by Puzzle Medical Devices; illustrates how modular-impeller claims have moved from industrial pump housings into miniaturized, catheter-deliverable medical devices.
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | US3388410A | Cleaning apparatus and method | 83 |
| 2 | US20160281712A1 | Tandem electric pump | 29 |
| 3 | US20090062020A1 | Multi-ribbed keyless coupling | 27 |
| 4 | WO2021062566A1 | Modular impeller system for fluid circulation | 14 |
| 5 | US20210296970A1 | Systems and processes for aligning permanent magnet motors in an electric submersible pump | 12 |
| 6 | US20190264707A1 | Electric submersible pumping unit | 12 |
| 7 | GB2467200A | Series connected underwater turbines | 11 |
| 8 | GB2470447A | Paired tidal turbines drive pumps connected in series | 10 |
| 9 | EP2031251A2 | Multi-ribbed keyless coupling | 10 |
| 10 | US20230056440A1 | Mammalian body implantable fluid flow influencing device | 8 |
Citation counts accumulate over time inside this searched corpus, so older records such as the 1968 cleaning-apparatus patent lead the table without necessarily representing current commercial practice.
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Three patterns stand out once the trend and IPC data are read together.
Growth has flattened, not accelerated
Filings climbed to a 2019 peak, held near that level at the 2022 midpoint (12 families), and show no renewed acceleration. In a field this size, a flat trend usually means the obvious modular-component configurations are already claimed and new entrants need a genuinely different mechanical approach to clear prior art.
Motor integration and downhole use are pulling claims outward
The pump-classification count (F04D) is more than double the next subclass, but electric motor (H02K) and drilling-well (E21B) counts are substantial enough to show that a large minority of this corpus is really about modular pumps built into motor assemblies or electric submersible pump strings for wells.
Filing is concentrated in the US with a modest international tail
Nearly half the records in this set were filed at the US receiving office, with the UK, WIPO/PCT, Canada, the EPO and India each accounting for single-digit-to-low-double-digit shares. That concentration matters for freedom-to-operate work: a clearance search limited to the US will miss a meaningful share of the corpus.
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to centrifugal pump modularity and standardization, with the prior art for and against each one.
Who is filing, and where the gate sits
With 82 families spread across a broad IPC footprint, no single assignee dominates the way concentration would in a narrower field. Recent-year momentum across the named assignees in this set shows zero filings in the latest tracked year for each, consistent with the flat overall trend rather than a specific competitor pulling back.
A dispersed field, not a concentrated one
No assignee in this corpus shows sustained high-volume filing into the most recent year, and the named entities with tracked momentum all show zero filings in the latest year. That points to a field where claim positions were staked out earlier in the period rather than being actively contested now.
Medical-device entrants are a small but distinct cluster
A handful of records, including the featured Puzzle Medical Devices filing, apply modular impeller concepts to implantable body-fluid devices. This is a small slice of the corpus but a structurally different one, since claim scope there turns on deliverability and assembly inside a catheter rather than on industrial flow rates.
Influence is weighted toward older, broader mechanical patents
The most-cited record in the set is a decades-old cleaning-apparatus filing, well ahead of more recent tandem-pump and coupling patents. Treat this as a signal of historical influence on the field's mechanical vocabulary, not as evidence of which claims are commercially active today.
| Assignee | Recent year | YoY |
|---|---|---|
| Extraction Management LLC | 0 | — |
| EXTRACT PRODUCTION SERVICES LLC | 0 | — |
| Accord Solutions Inc. | 0 | — |
| ODONNELL JAMES | 0 | — |
| Sertain LLC | 0 | — |
| Renk AG | 0 | — |
| PUZZLE MEDICAL DEVICES INC | 0 | -100% |
| Cosmogas GmbH | 0 | — |
Where to take this next
The trend and IPC data point to specific follow-up work rather than a single conclusion.
Check freedom-to-operate outside the US
With 38 of the tracked records at the US office against single-digit counts elsewhere, a clearance search confined to the US will miss a real share of this corpus, particularly UK and PCT-route filings.
Run a global FTO checkMap the medical-device overlap separately
The A61M cluster, including the featured implantable device filing, uses modular-impeller language in a materially different claim context than industrial pumps. Treat it as its own sub-search rather than folding it into pump-housing analysis.
Explore the A61M subsetWatch for renewed filing after the flat period
A peak in 2019 followed by a flat trend through 2022 and beyond can mean the space is settled — or that new filings are still working through the roughly 18-month publication lag. Re-run the trend query periodically rather than treating the current flat line as final.
Set a filing-trend alertCommon questions on this landscape
This corpus of 82 families does not show a single dominant assignee; recent-year momentum data lists several named entities all with zero filings in the latest tracked year, which points to a dispersed field rather than one leader. Ownership is spread across industrial pump makers, oilfield service companies working on electric submersible pumps, and at least one medical-device entrant. Anyone doing competitive tracking here should watch the IPC and geography splits as much as any single company's portfolio, since concentration by assignee is low.
The data shows filings climbing to a peak of 14 families in 2019 before flattening, with 12 filed at the 2022 midpoint and no renewed acceleration since. That pattern is consistent with the core modular-component configurations — hub/vane separation, standardized coupling interfaces — being claimed early in the period, leaving less obvious room for follow-on filings. It does not necessarily mean interest in the technology has declined, only that the visible patent activity has not grown.
Yes. H02K (electric motors and generators) accounts for 27 records and E21B (earth and rock drilling, including wells) accounts for 21 in this corpus, both substantial relative to the 54 in the core F04D pump classification. That overlap reflects that a meaningful portion of modular pump claims are written around motor-integrated or downhole submersible pump assemblies used in oil and gas wells, not standalone surface pumps.
US12383723B2, assigned to Puzzle Medical Devices, claims an implantable fluid flow device built from a modular impeller with a separate hub module and vane module, designed to be delivered unassembled through a catheter and mated together at the delivery site inside the body. It sits in the small A61M cluster of this corpus (5 records) rather than the core industrial-pump classification. Anyone designing an implantable or catheter-delivered impeller with a similar hub/vane split-and-mate mechanism should review this claim closely, though it is narrower in scope than a general modular pump housing patent.
The smaller IPC subclasses in this corpus — F16C shaft and bearing couplings (9 records), F16H gearing (5), F03B hydraulic machines (5) and F04B positive-displacement pumps (3) — carry far fewer filings than the core F04D and H02K classes. That does not guarantee open claim space, since low counts can also reflect low commercial interest, but keyless coupling standardization and modular gearing interfaces for pump trains are worth a manual prior-art check before assuming freedom to operate.
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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.
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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.