Drag Reducing Agent Patents: Top Companies & Filing Trends 2026
Drag reducing and flow improver patents: who holds the pipeline chemistry claims
63.1% concentration. The top 5 assignees hold 287 of 455 records in scope — the field is tightly held at the top, not fragmented. Filings rose to a peak of 11 in 2021, then fell to 4 by 2024 — a -64% drop over that three-year span, the most recent period that can be read as complete given publication lag. 2025 and 2026 figures are still filling in and should not be read as a continuing decline.
- 1BAKER HUGHES CO104
- 2LIQUIDPOWER SPECIALTY PRODUCTS INC75
- 3CONOCO INC44
- 4CALIFORNIA INST OF TECH34
- 5LUBRIZOL SPECIALTY PRODUCTS INC30
See the full drag reducing and flow improvers 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 drag reducing agent patents
Who holds the most patents on drag reducing agents?
One assignee leads the ranked list with 104 records, well ahead of the fifth-place holder at 30 and the tenth-place holder at 8. The top 5 assignees combined hold 287 of the 455 records in scope, or 63.1% of the field, so ownership is heavily concentrated rather than spread across many small filers. Anyone evaluating freedom to operate in this space should start with that leading handful before looking at the long tail of single-filing entrants.
Is the drag reducing agent patent field still growing?
Filing activity peaked at 11 filings in 2021 and had fallen to 4 by 2024, a -64% drop over that span and the most recent period that can be read as complete. Later years in the dataset (2025-2026) are understated because publication typically lags filing by around 18 months, so it is not yet possible to say whether the decline continues. The safest reading is that new claim activity around the established chemistry has cooled from its 2021 high.
What technology classes dominate drag reducing agent patents?
C09K (materials for miscellaneous applications) and F17D (pipeline transport) each appear in 42.0% of the 455 records in scope, the two largest classes and nearly identical in size, suggesting most filings pair a material claim with a pipeline-application claim in the same family. C08F addition polymers and C08L polymer compositions each cover close to a quarter of records, reflecting the polymer-chemistry backbone of the field. Because records can carry multiple IPC classes, these shares naturally add up to more than 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 Drag Reducing and Flow Improvers 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.