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Run your analysis now →https://www.patsnap.com/resources/blog/rd-blog/cold-forging-and-net-shape-forming-patent-landscape/ · Patsnap · data cut-off 2026-07-31 · downloaded from the live page
Patent Landscape · Cold Forging & Net Shape FormingCold Forging and Net Shape Forming Patents: Filing Trends and Leading Assignees
- 20.3% concentration at the top. The five leading assignees hold 384 of the 1,895 records in scope — a real lead, but nowhere near a lock on the field.
- Filing has cooled from its 2017 peak. 44 records in 2017 versus a -26% move from 23 (2021) to 17 (2024), the last year with clean data before publication lag sets in.
- Alloys and heat treatment, not forging hardware, dominate the claims. C22C alloy compositions (33.1%) and C21D heat treatment (22.4%) outrank the forging-equipment classes B21K and B21J.
1,895
Published Records
20%
Top-5 Share of All Records
-26%
Filing Growth 2021→2024
US
Leading Jurisdiction
Filing growth compares 2021 (23 records) with 2024 (17) — 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 1,895 records in scope (CR5), not by the ranked leaders only.
Published byPatsnap Research··7 min readSourced from Patsnap Eureka
Overview
What this landscape covers
This landscape maps 1,895 patent families published between 2015 and mid-2026 that combine cold forging, cold heading or net shape forming with a specific process control — phosphate coating, forming-limit analysis, tool stress, multistage transfer, work hardening or dimensional tolerance. That pairing narrows the field to filings where the applicant is claiming a controlled, repeatable process rather than the forging concept in general.
The records skew toward materials and metallurgy rather than tooling: alloy composition and heat treatment classes outnumber the forging-equipment classes, which says more about where applicants are staking claims than about which parts of the process are hardest to engineer.
Filing activity and technology mix, 2015–2026
Source: Patsnap Eureka. Assignee ranking and totals. Derived from a Patsnap search on Cold Forging and Net Shape Forming covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-07-31. Counts reflect published records only and shift as new filings publish.Run this in Eureka MCP
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The Numbers
Filing trend and technology composition
Publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, so the final one or two years in any trend chart will always look lower than the true filing rate once the backlog clears.
A 2017 peak followed by a multi-year pullback
Filings peaked at 44 in 2017. The clean comparison — 2021's 23 records against 2024's 17 — shows a -26% move over three years, the most recent span not distorted by publication lag.
Alloys and heat treatment carry more claim weight than forging tooling
C22C (alloys) appears in 33.1% of the 1,895 records and C21D (heat treatment) in 22.4%, ahead of B21K (forged products, 17.1%) and B21J (forging and hammering, 11.6%). Because records can carry multiple IPC classes, these shares add up to more than 100% and should be read against the 1,895-record total, not against each other.
Shares are the percentage of the 1,895 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
Source: Patsnap Eureka. Filing trend and technology composition. Derived from a Patsnap search on Cold Forging and Net Shape Forming covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-07-31. Counts reflect published records only and shift as new filings publish.
Go deeper on Cold Forging and Net Shape Forming with Eureka
This page is one run against one query. Ask Eureka your own question about cold forging and net shape forming and every answer comes back with the patent numbers behind it.
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A representative filing and the most-cited prior art
Representative Filing
EP1293578B1 — steel wire with excellent cold forging properties
SAMHWA STEEL CO., LTD.
The filing discloses steel wires and rods that hold a specific product of yield strength and work-hardening coefficient within a defined range, giving them cold forging properties strong enough to skip additional quenching or tempering after forging and to avoid long spheroidizing-anneal heating.Filed by Samhwa Steel; the claim value sits in the metallurgical window itself, not in a piece of tooling.
Most-cited records in this corpus
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | US6016727A | Recess drive bone screw and cooperable driving tool | 392 |
| 2 | US20110295290A1 | Surgical hemostatic clip including work-hardened, movement-inhibiting structure and method of manufacturing s… | 165 |
| 3 | US20060041448A1 | Number of new and unique manufacturing and assembley methods and processes to cost effectively refit and mark… | 146 |
| 4 | US5047182A | Complex ceramic and metallic shaped by low pressure forming and sublimative drying | 117 |
| 5 | US6544357B1 | Selected processing for non-equilibrium light alloys and products | 104 |
| 6 | US6131579A | Wire based temperature sensing electrode | 86 |
| 7 | US6371926B1 | Wire based temperature sensing electrodes | 84 |
| 8 | US5141373A | Flush breaking interference fit blind fastener | 81 |
| 9 | US2537029A | Method for manufacturing screw drivers | 79 |
| 10 | US6238127B1 | Pivot apparatus including a fastener and bushing assembly | 75 |
Citation counts favour older filings simply because they have had more time to be cited — treat this as a signal of influence within the searched corpus, not of current technical importance.
Each row carries its publication number; clicking a row searches Eureka by that number.
Source: Patsnap Eureka. Citation counts and representative records. Derived from a Patsnap search on Cold Forging and Net Shape Forming covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-07-31. Counts reflect published records only and shift as new filings publish.Run this in Eureka MCP
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What the numbers mean for a filing decision
Three patterns stand out once the record counts are read against each other rather than in isolation.
Concentration
20.3%
of 1,895 records held by the top 5
A lead, not a lock
The five leading assignees hold 384 of the 1,895 records in scope, and the top ten add up to 596 — 31.5%. That leaves the majority of the field held by a long tail of single- or few-filing entrants, so freedom-to-operate work cannot stop at the largest names.
Based on the full 100-company ranking returned for this search.
Filing momentum
-26%
2021 to 2024, the last clean years
Cooling from a 2017 peak
Filings peaked at 44 in 2017 and the clean 2021-to-2024 comparison shows a -26% move. Because publication lags filing by around 18 months, the last one or two years in the raw chart will read lower than the true rate — do not read a further slowdown into 2025 or 2026 figures.
Peak year: 2017 at 44 records.
Claim geography
33.1%
of records touch C22C alloys
Metallurgy outweighs tooling
C22C alloy compositions and C21D heat treatment together outrank the forging-hardware classes B21K and B21J, meaning the densest claim space is in what the metal is and how it is treated, not in the press or die design used to shape it.
A record can carry multiple IPC classes; shares are read against the 1,895-record total.
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Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to cold forging and net shape forming, with the prior art for and against each one.
Source: Patsnap Eureka. Co-assignee relationships and derived observations. Derived from a Patsnap search on Cold Forging and Net Shape Forming covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-07-31. Counts reflect published records only and shift as new filings publish.Run this in Eureka MCP
Players
Who is filing, and where the field is still open
The ranked leaders sit heavily in steel, bearing and automotive-component manufacturing, with several co-filing relationships pointing to established supplier partnerships rather than one-off collaborations.
Leader position
103
records for the top-ranked assignee
A clear but not dominant leader
The leading assignee holds 103 records against 54 for fifth place and 36 for tenth — a steep drop-off after the top few names, which is typical of a field with one strong incumbent and a crowded second tier.
From the 100-company assignee ranking.
Co-filing
10
co-assignee pairs identified
Supplier-style filing partnerships
The strongest co-assignee pairing appears 16 times, well ahead of the next strongest pairings, suggesting a small number of durable joint-development relationships between material suppliers and component makers rather than broad industry-wide collaboration.
Ten co-assignee pairs identified across the corpus.
Recent momentum
0
latest-year filings for several top-10 assignees
Momentum has stalled at the top
Several of the most active historical filers show zero records in the latest year, including one with a -100% year-on-year change. Given the roughly 18-month publication lag, this is as likely to reflect filings still working through the pipeline as a genuine pullback.
Momentum tracked across the leading assignees by latest-year record count.
Recent-year filing momentum by assignee
| Assignee | Recent year | YoY |
|---|---|---|
| NSK Ltd. | 0 | — |
| Kobe Steel, Ltd. | 0 | — |
| Sumitomo Metal Industries, Ltd. | 0 | — |
| NIPPON STEEL & SUMITOMO METAL CORP | 0 | — |
| NTN Corporation | 0 | — |
| Nippon Steel Corporation | 0 | -100% |
| American Axle & Manufacturing, Inc. | 0 | — |
| Nihon Parkerizing Co., Ltd. | 0 | — |
Source: Patsnap Eureka. Assignee-level momentum. Derived from a Patsnap search on Cold Forging and Net Shape Forming covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-07-31. Counts reflect published records only and shift as new filings publish.Run this in Eureka MCP
What's Next
Where to take this analysis
The dataset points to specific next steps rather than a single conclusion.
Check freedom to operate against the long tail
With only 20.3% of records held by the top five assignees, a clearance search that stops at the largest names will miss most of the field. The long tail of single-filing entrants is where an unexpected blocking claim is most likely to surface.
Run a freedom-to-operate checkWatch whether the 2021-2024 pullback continues
The -26% move from 2021 to 2024 is the clean comparison; 2025 and 2026 figures are still filling in due to publication lag. Re-checking this trend in a year will show whether the field is genuinely cooling or simply catching up on backlog.
Track filing trends over timeDraft around the metallurgy, not just the tooling
Because C22C and C21D claims outnumber the forging-hardware classes, a defensible position in this field increasingly depends on the alloy composition and heat-treatment window claimed, not only on press or die design.
Explore the technology compositionSource: Patsnap Eureka. Forward-looking reading of the same dataset. Derived from a Patsnap search on Cold Forging and Net Shape Forming covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-07-31. Counts reflect published records only and shift as new filings publish.Run this in Eureka MCP
FAQ
Common questions about cold forging patents
The leading assignee in this dataset holds 103 of the 1,895 records in scope, with the field dropping off to 54 records by fifth place and 36 by tenth. Together the top five hold 20.3% of all records and the top ten hold 31.5%, which means a clear leader exists but the majority of filings sit with a long tail of smaller filers. Any competitive review should look past the top names to that tail, since it accounts for most of the field.
Filings peaked in 2017 at 44 records and the clean year-on-year comparison, 2021 to 2024, shows a -26% change. Because patent publication typically lags filing by about 18 months, the most recent one or two years in any chart will understate real activity, so it is too early to call the trend a sustained decline. The safest reading is that filing has cooled from its 2017 high, not that it is currently collapsing.
Alloy composition (IPC class C22C) appears in 33.1% of the 1,895 records and heat treatment of metals (C21D) in 22.4%, both ahead of the core forging-process classes B21K (17.1%) and B21J (11.6%). This indicates that the densest claim activity concerns what the metal is and how it is treated rather than the forging equipment or die design itself. A record can belong to more than one class, so these percentages are not mutually exclusive.
EP1293578B1 covers steel wires and rods engineered so that the product of yield strength and a work-hardening coefficient falls within a defined numeric range, giving the material cold forging properties strong enough to skip additional quenching or tempering after forging. The value sits in the metallurgical specification of the wire, not in a piece of forging equipment or a process step outside the material itself. Anyone working with steel wire feedstock for cold-headed components should check their material's yield strength and work-hardening coefficient against this claimed range before relying on skipping post-forge heat treatment.
The dataset shows far fewer records touching multistage transfer tool-stress modelling, phosphate coating process control and forming-limit prediction for non-ferrous alloys compared with the dense alloy and heat-treatment classes. These narrower process-control areas are documented in the search terms but carry proportionally low claim density, which suggests room for a well-drafted, narrowly scoped filing rather than an open field with no prior art at all. Any filing strategy there should still run a freedom-to-operate check against the long tail of existing assignees.
Answers are grounded in the same dataset. Derived from a Patsnap search on Cold Forging and Net Shape Forming covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-07-31. Counts reflect published records only and shift as new filings publish.Run this in Eureka MCP
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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.