CBN Tools for Hardened Steel Patents: Top Companies & Trends 2026
Cubic Boron Nitride Tools for Hardened Steel Patents
Concentrated at the top. The five leading assignees together hold 40.6% of all 12,567 records in scope, and the ranked leaders extend to 100 companies with a long tail of single or few-filing entrants. Filings climbed to a peak of 488 in 2017. Using the last full three-year window that avoids publication-lag distortion, filings fell 53% from 325 in 2021 to 154 in 2024. Counts for 2025 and 2026 are still incomplete and should not be read as a continued decline.
- 13M INNOVATIVE PROPERTIES CO12.3%
- 2SUMITOMO ELECTRIC HARDMETAL CORP8.5%
- 3SAINT GOBAIN ABRASIVES INC8.1%
- 4SUMITOMO ELECTRIC INDUSTRIES LTD6.8%
- 5MITSUBISHI MATERIALS CORP5.0%
See the full cubic boron nitride tools for hardened steel 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 CBN hard-turning tool patents
Who are the leading patent holders in cubic boron nitride cutting tools for hardened steel?
The dataset ranks 100 companies by patent record count, with a clear leader holding 1,544 records against 624 at fifth place and 376 at tenth. The top five assignees combined account for 40.6% of all 12,567 records in scope, and the top ten account for 59.0%. Beyond the top ten the ranking flattens into a long tail of smaller filers, so competitive attention should focus on the leading cluster rather than the full list.
Is patent filing activity for CBN hard-turning tools growing or shrinking?
Filing activity peaked in 2017 at 488 records and has declined since. Comparing the last two full years available for trend analysis, filings dropped 53% from 325 in 2021 to 154 in 2024. Figures for 2025 and 2026 are still incomplete because patent publication typically lags filing by about 18 months, so the recent-year numbers understate actual activity and should not be read as a continuing crash.
What does US10202309B2 cover and does it block new CBN tool designs?
US10202309B2, assigned to Mitsubishi Materials Corporation, claims a cBN sintered cutting tool body with cBN grains at 40 to under 60 volume percent and a binder phase built around a Ti compound and Al2O3, where the Al content is tied to the cBN volume fraction by a defined linear relationship. Anyone designing a similar composition within that volume-percent and Al-content window should review the claim’s specific boundary conditions closely. Designs that fall clearly outside that compositional window, or that use a materially different binder chemistry, are less likely to be blocked by it.
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 Cubic Boron Nitride Tools for Hardened Steel 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.