Dry Molded Fibre Forming Patents: Top Companies & Trends 2026
- 51.3% concentration. The top 5 assignees hold 141 of 275 records in scope, so most of the claim space near the core process sits with a small group.
- Filing is picking back up. After the 2017 peak of 64 filings, activity troughed and has since climbed 2021 to 2024 (5 to 8 records), a 60% rise over that span.
- Nonwovens and board overlap. D04H (nonwovens) and B27N (particle/fibre board) each cover roughly a third of records, meaning most filers are protecting the same forming step from two IPC angles.
Filing growth compares 2021 (5 records) with 2024 (8) — a three-year span. 2024 is the most recent year we treat as complete: publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, so 2025 onwards are still filling in and any growth rate that ends there would understate the field. Top-5 share is the combined record count of the five largest assignees divided by all 275 records in scope (CR5), not by the ranked leaders only.
What this technology covers
Dry molded fibre forming replaces water-based pulp slurry with air-laid or dry-formed fibre deposition, then presses the mat into a molded shape. The 275 records in scope span the forming step itself (fibre and air distribution, vacuum-assisted deposition), the downstream shaping and pressing operations, and the packaging and box-making claims that consume the molded output. Filers describe the same core idea under several IPC headings at once — nonwovens, particle board and plastics shaping — which is why the technology composition figures below add to well over 100%.
Because publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, the most recent one to two years in any trend understate real filing activity; treat 2024 as the last reliably complete year and read 2025 onward as still filling in.
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Filing trends and technology composition
Two views of the same 275-record dataset: the year-by-year filing count, and the IPC subclasses those records fall into.
Filing trend: a 2017 peak, a trough, then renewed growth
Filings peaked at 64 in 2017, fell back sharply, and rebuilt from 5 records in 2021 to 8 in 2024 — a 60% increase over that three-year window. Do not read the 2025-2026 tail as decline; those years are still being backfilled by the roughly 18-month publication lag.
Technology composition: nonwovens and board classes dominate
B27N (particle/fibre board) and D04H (nonwovens & felts) each sit near a third of all records, with B29C (plastics shaping) close behind at 27.6%. Packaging-facing classes (B31B box-making, B65B packaging) and press equipment (B30B) trail but are far from empty, showing the field spans forming, shaping and end-use packaging claims simultaneously.
Shares are the percentage of the 275 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
Go deeper on Dry Molded Fibre Forming with Eureka
This page is one run against one query. Ask Eureka your own question about dry molded fibre forming and every answer comes back with the patent numbers behind it.
Try EurekaThe most-cited prior art in this space
Dry forming plant and method for dry forming a fibrous tissue using such dry forming plant
A dry forming plant comprising at least one distribution unit with a fibre and air inlet, positioned above a forming wire opposite a vacuum box connected to a suction unit. Rotating rollers with protruding spikes cover the open bottom of the distribution unit to control fibre release. The vacuum box is divided into at least three longitudinal zones transversal to the wire's advance direction, each with upwardly orientated intake, giving the process zone-by-zone control over deposition density across the web.Filed by Advance Nonwoven A/S, published 2022-08-25.
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | US6355079B1 | Production method for multilayer filter material and multilayer filter material | 152 |
| 2 | US20030134559A1 | System and method for dry forming absorbent cores | 106 |
| 3 | US6832905B2 | System and method for dry forming absorbent cores | 104 |
| 4 | WO2017160218A1 | Method for manufacturing a cellulose product, cellulose product forming apparatus and cellulose product | 79 |
| 5 | US5779847A | Process for high performance, permeable fibrous structure | 77 |
| 6 | US4351793A | Method for dry forming a uniform web of fibers | 67 |
| 7 | WO2011057641A1 | A non-woven fibre product comprising fibres of recycled material | 61 |
| 8 | US5009971A | Gas recombinant separator | 61 |
| 9 | US20100190020A1 | Three-dimensional packaging | 50 |
| 10 | US20030130638A1 | System and method for dry forming zoned absorbent cores | 44 |
Citation counts inside a searched corpus favour older filings, so read this as a signal of influence on the field rather than of current commercial relevance.
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Browse MCP servers →What the numbers mean for a filing strategy
Three findings that shape where to file next and what to check before drafting new claims.
The core forming step is already crowded
Just over half of all records in scope sit with the five leading assignees. New claims on the basic distribution-unit-plus-vacuum-box forming architecture are filing into dense prior art, not open space.
Activity is rebuilding after the 2017 peak
The 2017 spike of 64 filings was followed by a trough; the rebuild from 5 to 8 records between 2021 and 2024 suggests renewed commercial interest rather than a mature, settled field.
Two classification lenses cover the same ground
Nonwovens and particle/fibre board classes each touch roughly a third of records. Drafters filing purely under one heading risk missing prior art indexed under the other.
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to dry molded fibre forming, with the prior art for and against each one.
Who holds the ground, and where it thins out
The ranked leaders account for two-thirds of all records between them, but the picture past the top ten opens up quickly into single- and double-filing entrants.
A small group holds the core forming claims
The leader alone accounts for 82 records; the fifth-ranked assignee holds 12. That gap between first and fifth is wide enough that a single company's filing choices materially shape the field's centre of gravity.
Concentration holds through the second five
Adding ranks six through ten brings combined share to 66.9% of the 275 records in scope, with the tenth-place assignee holding 7 records. Beyond rank ten, the ranking of 70 companies thins into small, often single-family filers.
Collaboration is limited and mostly internal
The strongest co-filing pairs link named inventors to their own employer rather than across separate companies, suggesting most development here happens in-house rather than through joint filings.
| Assignee | Recent year | YoY |
|---|---|---|
| PulPac AB | 0 | — |
| FormFiber Denmark ApS | 0 | — |
| Dan-Web Holding A/S | 0 | — |
| USG Interiors Inc. | 0 | — |
| www.IdeAndersen.dk | 0 | — |
| Brdr. Hartmann A/S | 0 | — |
| Stora Enso Oyj | 0 | — |
| Paragon Trade Brands Inc. | 0 | — |
Where to take this analysis
The dataset points to a field that is concentrated at the core but still open at the edges. Use Patsnap Eureka to move from these findings to a working freedom-to-operate or whitespace view.
Map the top assignees' full portfolios
See every family the leading five hold beyond this search string, including continuations and jurisdictional variants.
Explore assignee portfoliosCheck a draft claim against cited prior art
Run a candidate claim on distribution-unit or vacuum-zone geometry against the highest-cited records before drafting.
Run a claim checkTrack the 2021-2024 momentum by class
Break the renewed filing growth down by IPC subclass to see which branch is driving the rebuild.
Build a trend viewCommon questions about dry molded fibre forming patents
The assignee ranking covers 70 companies across 275 records, with the leading assignee alone holding 82 records. The top 5 combined hold 141 records, or 51.3% of all records in scope, and the top 10 combined hold 184 records, or 66.9%. That concentration means a small number of companies control most of the core forming-process claims, while the remaining ranked companies each hold a much smaller slice.
Filings peaked in 2017 at 64 records, then fell sharply before rebuilding. Between 2021 and 2024, recorded filings rose from 5 to 8, a 60% increase over that three-year span. Because publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, the 2025 and 2026 figures are still incomplete and should not be read as a slowdown; the reliable trend read stops at 2024.
The two largest classes are B27N (particle and fibre board), covering 31.6% of the 275 records, and D04H (nonwovens and felts), covering 31.3%. B29C (shaping of plastics) follows at 27.6%, with B31B (box and carton making), B29B (plastics preparation), B65B (packaging), B30B (presses) and B29K (plastics moulding materials) also represented. Because a single record can carry multiple IPC classes, these shares add up to more than 100% of the record total and should not be summed into a single figure.
This filing, from Advance Nonwoven A/S and published 2022-08-25, describes a dry forming plant with a distribution unit positioned above a forming wire, opposite a vacuum box divided into at least three longitudinal zones with upwardly orientated intake. Rotating rollers with protruding spikes cover the distribution unit's open bottom to control fibre release onto the wire. The zoned vacuum control is the more specific technical detail, and anyone building a similar forming line should check their zone geometry and roller mechanism against this claim language directly rather than assuming a generic vacuum box design clears it.
The core forming and pressing architecture is densely claimed by the top assignees, but several adjacent sub-areas carry far fewer records: zone-controlled vacuum intake geometry, spiked-roller distribution control, press-cycle time reduction, and surface-finishing of molded mats. These sit inside the same search scope but away from the highest-density claim clusters. A freedom-to-operate review focused on these narrower branches is more likely to surface open claim space than one aimed at the basic forming step itself.
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Disclaimer. This page is generated from Patsnap Eureka data drawn from a limited snapshot of global patent and scientific-literature records, and is provided for general information and reference only.
Patent data carries inherent limitations: recent filings (typically the most recent 18–24 months) are under-counted due to standard publication lag; counts may be reported at either a patent-family or a patent-record basis and are not always directly comparable; classification, applicant-name, and citation data may contain errors, duplicates, or omissions; and the underlying search query defines and constrains the scope shown. As a result, the analysis may be incomplete or inaccurate and may not reflect the full technology landscape.
Nothing on this page constitutes an exhaustive prior-art, novelty, freedom-to-operate, or validity search, nor does it constitute legal, financial, investment, or professional advice, and it should not be relied upon as such. Any patent, commercial, or strategic decision should be verified independently and reviewed with qualified patent, legal, and domain professionals. Patsnap makes no warranties, express or implied, as to the accuracy, completeness, or fitness for any particular purpose of the information presented.
Machine translation. Assignee and organisation names originally recorded in Chinese, Japanese or Korean have been rendered into English by an AI translation step so that the tables stay readable. These renderings are best-effort and may not match a company’s registered English name; the original name is what the underlying patent record carries, and it is what any Eureka query launched from this page uses.