DRI Handling Patents: Top Companies & Filing Trends 2026
Direct Reduced Iron Handling Patents: Who Leads and Where the Gaps Are
41.8% of the field sits with the top five assignees out of 596 records in scope, but the tenth-ranked filer holds only 16 — a long tail follows the leaders. Filings rose from 22 in 2017 to a peak of 85 in 2022, then fell to 22 by 2024 — a 66% drop over that three-year span. Publication typically lags filing by around 18 months, so 2025 and 2026 figures are still filling in and should not yet be read as a continued decline.
- 1FORM ENERGY INC108
- 2MIDREX TECHNOLOGIES INC53
- 3NU IRON TECHNOLOGY LLC39
- 4HYLSA SA DE CV26
- 5IDREX INT BV ROTTERDAM ZURICH BRANCH23
See the full direct reduced iron handling 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 DRI handling patents
Who holds the most patents on direct reduced iron handling?
One assignee leads the field clearly, with 108 records versus 23 for the fifth-ranked filer and 16 for the tenth. The top five assignees combined hold 41.8% of the 596 records in scope, and the top ten hold 57.0%. That said, the ranked list runs to 100 companies, so there is a substantial long tail of moderate and single-filing entrants beyond the leaders — this is a concentrated-at-the-top field, not a two-company market.
Why does DRI need passivation and what does that mean for patent filing?
Direct reduced iron is highly reactive immediately after reduction and will reoxidize on exposure to air or moisture, which creates fire, heat-buildup and transport-safety risks — this is why passivation, inert-gas storage and bulk-density control all sit inside the same search scope. Despite that centrality, the IPC class most tied to surface coating and passivation chemistry (C23C) appears in only 3.4% of the 596 records, well behind core reduction (C21B, 58.4%) and refining (C22B, 27.3%) classes. That gap suggests coating-specific claim space is less crowded than the reduction and furnace equipment around it.
Is patent filing activity in DRI handling growing or slowing?
Filings rose steadily to a peak of 85 in 2022, then fell to 22 by 2024 — a 66% decline over that three-year window, using the most recent year that can be treated as complete. Publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, so the 2025 and 2026 figures in any dataset are still incomplete and should not be read as evidence of a continuing drop. Recent-year momentum by assignee shows most tracked leaders at zero filings in the latest year, which is consistent with either genuine slowdown or simply incomplete recent-year data — the two are hard to separate this close to the cut-off.
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 Direct Reduced Iron Handling 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.