Coarse Particle Flotation Patents: Who Holds the Ground and Where It's Open
A two-family cluster dominates citations. US20160310956A1 and WO2016170437A1, both titled "Process for recovering value metals from ore," carry 27 and 22 citations respectively — far ahead of anything else in the set. Filings hit their tracked high of 12 in 2017. The last complete-year comparison available, 2021 to 2024, shows a drop from 7 to 3 filings — a 57% decline. Records from 2025 onward are still incomplete because publication typically lags filing by around 18 months, so the most recent bars understate real activity and should not be read as a continued fall.
- 1NEWCREST MINING18
- 2ANGLO AMERICAN TECH & SUSTAINABILITY SERVICES LTD11
- 3ANGLO AMERICAN SERVICES UK LTD11
- 4CIDRA CORP SERVICES INC10
- 5WEIR MINERALS AUSTRALIA LTD9
See the full coarse particle flotation analysis in Eureka
- The complete ranking, not just the top five
- Every IPC branch with its share of the corpus
- The most-cited records, and where claim space is still thin
Common questions about coarse particle flotation patents
Who holds the most patents in coarse particle flotation?
The dataset's ranked list of 13 assignees is led by a company with 18 records, roughly double the count of the fifth-placed assignee at 9. The leader is a mining operator rather than an equipment supplier, which reflects that large mining companies in this field often run their own internal process-engineering patent programs alongside the equipment makers. Below the top few positions, filing counts drop quickly into single digits and eventually to a single filing at tenth place, so the field has a clear leader but no dominant duopoly.
Is coarse particle flotation patent activity growing or slowing?
Filings peaked in 2017 at 12 records in this dataset and the last complete year-over-year comparison, from 2021 (7) to 2024 (3), shows a 57% decline. However, publication typically lags filing by around 18 months, so 2025 and later years in any trend chart are still incomplete and should not be read as continued decline. The honest read is that complete-year data through 2024 shows fewer new filings than the 2017 peak, not that the technology has stopped moving.
What is the most cited patent in coarse particle flotation?
US20160310956A1, titled "Process for recovering value metals from ore," carries 27 citations in this corpus, with its related family member WO2016170437A1 close behind at 22. Both significantly outpace the next most-cited records, WO2020037357A1 at 11 and WO2020152651A1 at 7. Because citation counts inside a searched corpus tend to favor older filings, these numbers indicate lasting influence on later applicants rather than current commercial dominance.
Disclaimer. This analysis is based on Patsnap Eureka data drawn from a limited snapshot of global patent records and is provided for general information and reference only. Patent data carries inherent limitations — recent filings are under-counted because of publication lag, counts may be on a record or family basis, classification and applicant-name data may contain errors or duplicates, and the underlying search query defines the scope shown — so the analysis may be incomplete or inaccurate and may not reflect the full technology landscape.
Nothing here is an exhaustive prior-art, novelty, freedom-to-operate or validity search, nor does it constitute legal, financial or professional advice, and it should not be relied upon as such. Verify independently and review with qualified patent and legal professionals before acting on it.
Method: Filing trend and technology composition. Derived from a Patsnap search on Coarse Particle Flotation covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-07-31. Counts reflect published records only and shift as new filings publish. Every share divides by all records in scope. Data: Patsnap Eureka. See the full landscape report.