Induction Process Heating Patents: Leaders & White Space 2026
Filing growth compares 2021 (15 records) with 2024 (14) — 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 381 records in scope (CR5), not by the ranked leaders only.
What the induction process heating patent record shows
Induction process heating sits at the intersection of electrical engineering and industrial thermal processing: coils, power electronics and control loops delivering heat directly into metal, chemical or mineral feedstocks without combustion. The 381 records in scope span 2015 through the partial 2026 filing year, drawn from applicants filing on induction heating language alongside process-heat, waste-heat and energy-efficiency terms. Patent families are the fairer counting unit here because they strip out continuation filings and multi-jurisdiction duplicates that inflate raw document counts in a field this cross-disciplinary.
The picture that emerges is a moderately concentrated field: one assignee leads clearly, a handful of others hold mid-single-digit counts, and the rest of the 100 ranked companies each hold only one or two records. Technology composition skews toward metal heat treatment and chemical/physical processing classes rather than narrow electric-heating circuitry, suggesting the applied use cases — not the induction mechanism itself — are where most claim activity concentrates.
Filing trend and technology composition
Two views of the same 381 records: how filing volume has moved year over year, and which IPC subclasses carry the claim weight.
Filing trend, 2017-2026
Filings ran at 17 in 2017 and reached a peak of 24 in 2025. The only comparison that spans two complete filing years, 2021 (15) to 2024 (14), shows a 7% decline — read the 2025 and 2026 figures as provisional, since publication typically lags filing by around 18 months and both years will fill in as later publications land.
Technology composition by IPC subclass
H05B (electric heating and lighting circuits) leads at 13.4% of the 381 records, followed by C21D (heat treatment of metals) at 8.9% and B01J (chemical/physical processes and catalysis) and C01B (non-metallic elements and inorganic compounds) tied at 8.4% each. Because a single record can carry several IPC classes, these shares add up to more than 100% of the record total — they describe overlap, not a partition of the field.
Shares are the percentage of the 381 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
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Try EurekaRepresentative filing and most-cited records
Closed-loop control of an induction heating system in a generative manufacturing process
A method which controls a heating power induced in a component in a generative manufacturing process wherein the heating power is induced by an induction heating system. The closed-loop control method is based on the concept of indirectly determining the previously unknown heating power which is actually induced in the component. This is accomplished by the power losses, which substantially consist of waste heat to the cooling liquid and to the other surroundings, being deducted from the electrical power that is inserted into the induction heating system.Filed by Siemens Energy Global GmbH & Co. KG, published 2022-10-20.
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | US20160045841A1 | New and improved system for processing various chemicals and materials | 861 |
| 2 | US20150143806A1 | Quintuple-Effect Generation Multi-Cycle Hybrid Renewable Energy System with Integrated Energy Provisioning, S… | 268 |
| 3 | WO2014153570A2 | New and improved system for processing various chemicals and materials | 219 |
| 4 | US3972372A | Exraction of hydrocarbons in situ from underground hydrocarbon deposits | 72 |
| 5 | US20180209123A1 | Hybrid atmospheric water generator | 71 |
| 6 | EP2955372A2 | Quintuple-effect generation multi-cycle hybrid renewable energy system with integrated energy provisioning, s… | 64 |
| 7 | WO2016187709A1 | Hybrid atmospheric water generator | 61 |
| 8 | CN106552831A | 一种薄规格热轧带钢的制造方法 | 58 |
| 9 | US6943461B2 | All-weather energy and water production via steam-enhanced vortex tower | 57 |
| 10 | US20030201646A1 | All-weather energy and water production via steam-enhanced vortex tower | 54 |
Citation counts favour older filings that have had more time to accumulate citations inside this corpus; treat them as a signal of influence on the field's prior art, not as a measure of current commercial relevance.
Patent titles are shown in the language they were filed in, not translated, so that each record stays verifiable against the original filing — a translated title will not match in Eureka or in any national register. Each row carries its publication number; clicking a row searches Eureka by that number.
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Browse MCP servers →What the numbers mean for a filing decision
Three read-outs from the same dataset, each pointing to a different practical question: who to watch, where volume sits, and what the growth curve actually says.
The top of the field is thin, not thick
The five leading assignees together account for 12.9% of all 381 records in scope, and the top ten reach 20.7%. That leaves close to four-fifths of filing activity spread across a long tail of the remaining ranked companies, most holding only one or two records — a field where no single entity has locked up broad freedom to operate.
Electric-circuit claims are outnumbered by applied-process claims
H05B (electric heating and lighting circuits) is the single largest class at 13.4% of records, but C21D, B01J and C01B — metal heat treatment, catalysis and inorganic chemistry — together describe a wider footprint of applied use. This suggests most differentiation is happening in how induction heat is applied to a specific process, not in the induction hardware itself.
No acceleration in the last complete comparison window
Filings moved from 15 in 2021 to 14 in 2024, a 7% decline across the only two years in this dataset that can both be treated as complete. The 2025 peak of 24 and the lower 2026 count should not be read as a resurgence or a slowdown — both years are still filling in under the roughly 18-month gap between filing and publication.
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to electric process heat: induction process heating patent landscape, with the prior art for and against each one.
Where to take this analysis
The dataset points to a field with room at the edges. These are the next questions worth running against it.
Map the applied-process branches in detail
C21D, B01J, C01B and C10J each carry meaningful share but sit well below H05B — worth a closer look at which specific applied processes (metal heat treatment, gasification, catalysis) are drawing filings and which are still thin.
Explore technology branches →Track the long tail for emerging entrants
With the top 10 assignees holding only 20.7% of records, most activity comes from companies filing once or twice. Watching new entrants into that tail is often the earliest signal of a shift in direction.
Run an assignee watch →Revisit the 2025-2026 filing count once it settles
Publication lag means the most recent two years will keep rising. A repeat pull in 12 months will show whether the 2021-2024 decline held or reversed.
Set a re-run reminder →Common questions on induction process heating patents
The assignee ranking for this field covers 100 companies, with one clear leader holding 12 of the 381 records in scope. The picture drops off quickly after that: fifth place holds 7 records and tenth place holds 5, and the top ten combined account for only 20.7% of all records. That leaves the large majority of filing activity spread across companies holding just one or two records each, so tracking the leader alone will miss most of the competitive picture.
The only two-year comparison in this dataset that can be treated as fully complete, 2021 to 2024, shows filings falling from 15 to 14, a 7% decline. A later peak of 24 filings appears in 2025, but publication typically lags actual filing by around 18 months, so 2025 and 2026 counts are still incomplete and should not be read as either a rebound or a slump yet. A reliable read on recent momentum will only be possible once those years finish publishing.
Electric heating and lighting circuits (H05B) is the single largest IPC subclass at 13.4% of the 381 records, but applied-process classes are close behind: heat treatment of metals (C21D) at 8.9%, and chemical/physical processing (B01J) and inorganic compounds (C01B) each at 8.4%. Because records often carry more than one IPC code, these figures overlap rather than sum to a total, and together they indicate that claim activity is spread across how induction heat gets applied, not concentrated in the heating circuitry alone.
Classes further down the list, such as separation processes (B01D at 6.6%), gasification of fuels (C10J at 5.0%) and plastics shaping (B29C at 4.7%), carry meaningfully less filing density than the leading classes, which is where a first mover has more room to establish a clean claim position. Combined with a long tail of assignees holding only one or two records apiece, the field overall shows more open ground than a single dominant player would suggest.
The most-cited record in scope is US20160045841A1, a system for processing various chemicals and materials, cited 861 times within this corpus, followed at some distance by US20150143806A1 describing a hybrid renewable energy generation system cited 268 times. High citation counts in a searched corpus tend to favour older filings that have simply had more time to accumulate citations, so these figures are best read as a marker of prior-art influence rather than current commercial weight.
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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.
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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.