Cryocooler and Small-Scale Refrigeration Patents: Filing Trends and Where the Field Is Still Open
217 families, 46.3% of the field. The top five assignees hold 217 of 469 records in scope — filing concentration is high even before you look at the long tail. Filings ran from 37 in 2017 to a peak of 51 in 2023, then eased to 2021-comparable levels by 2024 (28 to 29, +4%). 2025 and 2026 figures are still filling in under normal publication lag and should not be read as a decline.
- 1SUMITOMO HEAVY IND LTD125
- 2SUPERCONDUCTOR TECHNOLOGIES INC27
- 3OHIO UNIV22
- 4RAYTHEON CO22
- 5SUNPOWER INC21
See the full cryocooler and small scale refrigeration 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 on cryocooler patents
How many cryocooler patents are there and what does this dataset cover?
This landscape tracks 469 published patent records filed between 2015 and mid-2026 that combine a pulse tube, Stirling or Gifford-McMahon cryocooler architecture with a specific engineering variable such as regenerator material, cold finger design, cooldown time or operating temperature range. It is not a count of every cryocooler patent ever filed; it is a scoped search built around performance-relevant claim language. Receiving offices are led by the United States, followed by the EPO and WIPO's PCT route, with meaningful direct filing in China and Germany.
Who are the leading assignees in cryocooler patents?
The ranking is concentrated at the top: the leading assignee holds 125 records, and the top five combined hold 217 of 469 records, 46.3% of the field. That concentration drops off steeply after the top ten, which together hold 285 records (60.8%); the remainder of the ranked 100 companies file in much smaller numbers, often just a handful of records each. Anyone benchmarking competitors should treat the leader as a category of its own rather than grouping it with the rest of the field.
What IPC classes matter most for cryocooler prior art searches?
F25B, covering refrigeration and heat pumps, appears on 295 of 469 records (62.9%) and should be the first class checked in any freedom-to-operate or novelty search. F25D (cooling) and F02G (hot-gas and external-combustion engines) follow at 11.7% and 8.7% respectively. Measurement-adjacent classes G01J and G01R, and semiconductor class H01L, each sit around 6-7%, reflecting cryocoolers' use in imaging and detector cooling applications; because records can carry multiple classes, these shares do not sum to 100%.
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 Cryocooler and Small Scale Refrigeration 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.