One assignee leads with 31 records out of 277 in this dataset, noticeably ahead of the fifth-ranked company at 14. The top five combined hold 36.8% of all records, so while there is a clear leader, the majority of filings are spread across a long tail of 95 ranked companies. Anyone assessing competitive risk should look at both the leader’s portfolio and the broader spread, since a third of the field being concentrated still leaves most of it open.

Filings peaked at 21 in 2018 and have declined since, with the clearest recent measure being a 67% drop from 12 filings in 2021 to 4 in 2024. That 2021-2024 window is the most reliable recent signal because publication lag of roughly 18 months means 2025 and 2026 figures are still incomplete. It would be premature to call the field dead on the strength of the newest years alone; the honest read is a real pullback through 2024 with an unclear trajectory beyond it.

B02C, the core crushing, grinding and pulverising classification, appears in 65.7% of the 277 records, confirming that mechanical chamber design — liner geometry, mantle wear, eccentric throw mechanisms — remains the field’s centre of gravity. Supporting technologies show up at much lower shares: image processing at 9.0%, material analysis at 8.3%, and AI-based computing at 3.6%. This suggests sensing and computational layers are additive features on top of mechanical claims rather than a separate dominant category.