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Run your analysis now →https://www.patsnap.com/resources/blog/rd-blog/electric-process-heat-resistance-process-heater-patent-landscape-patent-landscape/ · Patsnap · data cut-off 2026-07-31 · downloaded from the live page
Patent Landscape · Electric Process HeatResistance Process Heater Patents: Who Leads and Where the Field Is Still Open
13.1K
Published Records
7%
Top-5 Share of All Records
-29%
Filing Growth 2021→2024
US
Leading Jurisdiction
Filing growth compares 2021 (349 records) with 2024 (247) — 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 13,091 records in scope (CR5), not by the ranked leaders only.
Published byPatsnap Research··6 min readSourced from Patsnap Eureka
Field Overview
What resistance process heater patents actually cover
Resistance process heaters convert electrical resistance into controlled heat for industrial process equipment — from semiconductor wafer chucks to chemical process lines and material coating chambers. The search set defined here spans 13,091 published records from 2015 through the 2026 data cut-off, drawn from filings that name a resistance process heater directly or combine resistance, process and heater concepts in the claims or title.
The technology composition shows this is not a single-industry field. H05B (electric heating and lighting circuits) is the largest single class, but semiconductor-adjacent classes — H01L, C23C, G01N — collectively carry a large share of records, alongside plastics shaping (B29C) and crystal growth (C30B). That spread suggests resistance heating claims are being filed as a supporting technology inside several distinct manufacturing stacks rather than as a single standalone product category.
Filing activity peaked in 2019 at 434 records and has since declined, with 2021's 349 filings falling to 247 by 2024 — a 29% drop over that span. Because publication trails filing by roughly 18 months, the 2025 and 2026 counts shown in the trend chart are still incomplete and should not be read as confirmation that the decline is accelerating.
Filing volume and technology mix at a glance
Source: Patsnap Eureka. Assignee ranking and totals. Derived from a Patsnap search on Electric Process Heat: Resistance Process Heater Patent Landscape covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-07-31. Counts reflect published records only and shift as new filings publish.Run this in Eureka MCP
The Numbers
Filing trend and technology composition
The dataset covers 13,091 records filed or published between 2015 and the 2026 cut-off, spread across six major receiving offices led by the United States, South Korea and China.
A field past its filing peak, not one accelerating
Filings rose to a peak of 434 in 2019, then eased. The 2021-to-2024 window shows a 29% decline (349 to 247 records), a real trend since 2024 is the most recent year with largely complete publication data. Treat 2025 and 2026 figures as provisional under the usual 18-month lag.
Semiconductor and coating classes sit alongside core heating circuits
H05B leads at 14.6% of all 13,091 records, but H01L (9.5%), C23C (7.1%) and G01N (7.1%) show the technology is heavily entangled with semiconductor processing and surface deposition equipment. B29C (6.2%) and B01J (3.7%) point to plastics shaping and catalytic process applications as secondary but persistent use cases. Because a single record can carry multiple IPC classes, these shares add up to more than 100% and should be read as overlap, not as a partition of the field.
Shares are the percentage of the 13,091 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
Source: Patsnap Eureka. Filing trend and technology composition. Derived from a Patsnap search on Electric Process Heat: Resistance Process Heater Patent Landscape covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-07-31. Counts reflect published records only and shift as new filings publish.
Go deeper on Electric Process Heat: Resistance Process Heater Patent Landscape with Eureka
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Try EurekaRepresentative Filing
A representative claim: fault detection in heater groups
Representative Record · US20170034874A1
Detecting heater failure in a group of electric heaters in a process equipment heating system
EDWARDS VACUUM LLC
A process equipment heating system has a group of electric heaters and a heater checking system. The heater checking system is configured to determine a resistance value for the group of electric heaters, compare that value with a reference resistance value, and judge a fault condition if the measured value differs from the reference by more than a predetermined amount.Filed by Edwards Vacuum LLC, 2017-02-02. The claim sits on resistance-based fault detection across a group of heaters rather than a single heater element.
Most-cited records in the resistance process heater field
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | US3338992A | Process for forming non-woven filamentary structures from fiber-forming synthetic organic polymers | 3,408 |
| 2 | US20060196518A1 | Flameless electronic atomizing cigarette | 1,898 |
| 3 | US2477383A | Sulfonated detergent and its method of preparation | 1,106 |
| 4 | EP1618803A1 | A flameless electronic atomizing cigarette | 1,011 |
| 5 | US6847014B1 | Method and apparatus for controlling the spatial temperature distribution across the surface of a workpiece s… | 752 |
| 6 | WO2012171072A1 | Humifier and layered heating element | 714 |
| 7 | US5444217A | Rapid thermal processing apparatus for processing semiconductor wafers | 683 |
| 8 | US20060226117A1 | Phase change based heating element system and method | 587 |
| 9 | US6129044A | Apparatus for substrate processing with improved throughput and yield | 579 |
| 10 | US20050263075A1 | Delivery systems for efficient vaporization of precursor source material | 575 |
Citation counts reflect influence inside this searched corpus and skew toward older records; they are not a measure of current commercial importance.
Each row carries its publication number; clicking a row searches Eureka by that number.
Source: Patsnap Eureka. Citation counts and representative records. Derived from a Patsnap search on Electric Process Heat: Resistance Process Heater Patent Landscape covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-07-31. Counts reflect published records only and shift as new filings publish.Run this in Eureka MCP
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What the filing pattern tells a claim strategist
Three signals matter more than the headline record count: how concentrated ownership is, where the technology overlaps with other equipment classes, and who co-files together.
Concentration
7.1%
of 13,091 records held by top 5 assignees
No single company dominates
The leading assignee holds 212 families and the top 5 combined account for 930 records — 7.1% of all 13,091 records in scope. The top 10 reach 11.5%. For a field this size, that is a long tail: most filings come from entities outside the ranked leaders.
Ranked leaders, 100 companies
Filing trend
-29%
2021 to 2024 filing change
A field that has passed its filing peak
Filings peaked in 2019 at 434 and dropped from 349 in 2021 to 247 in 2024, a 29% decline over that span. This is the most recent complete window; 2025-2026 counts are still filling in under the usual publication lag and should not be read as an accelerating drop.
Peak year: 2019, 434 records
Technology overlap
14.6%
share of records in H05B, the largest class
Heating circuits lead, but semiconductor classes are close behind
H05B electric heating circuits carry the largest single share at 14.6% of all records, but H01L semiconductor devices (9.5%), C23C coating (7.1%) and G01N testing (7.1%) show resistance heating claims are frequently filed as part of semiconductor and coating equipment stacks.
IPC shares sum above 100% because records carry multiple classes
Co-filing pattern
18 filings
strongest co-assignee pair
A small number of tightly linked filing pairs
Only 10 co-assignee pairs appear in the dataset, and the strongest links trace back to Shell entities filing jointly with named inventors and affiliated subsidiaries — a pattern typical of in-house R&D programmes rather than cross-company joint ventures.
10 co-assignee pairs identified
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Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to electric process heat: resistance process heater patent landscape, with the prior art for and against each one.
Source: Patsnap Eureka. Co-assignee relationships and derived observations. Derived from a Patsnap search on Electric Process Heat: Resistance Process Heater Patent Landscape covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-07-31. Counts reflect published records only and shift as new filings publish.Run this in Eureka MCP
Next Steps
Where to take this analysis next
The figures above describe the field as it stands; the questions below are where a working team typically goes next.
Map the white space in under-claimed branches
Classes like B01J and C30B carry a modest share of records relative to H05B — worth checking whether that reflects real technical difficulty or simply fewer filers exploring the combination.
Explore white space in EurekaTrack the assignees behind the long tail
With the top 10 holding only 11.5% of records, most of the field sits outside the ranked leaders — a fuller assignee pull can surface regional players not visible in this summary.
Run a full assignee search in EurekaCheck freedom-to-operate against the most-cited records
The most-cited documents in this set date back decades; a freedom-to-operate check should weight recent filings more heavily even where citation counts are lower.
Start an FTO check in EurekaSource: Patsnap Eureka. Forward-looking reading of the same dataset. Derived from a Patsnap search on Electric Process Heat: Resistance Process Heater Patent Landscape covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-07-31. Counts reflect published records only and shift as new filings publish.Run this in Eureka MCP
Frequently Asked
Questions practitioners ask about this field
The dataset covers 13,091 published records filed or published between 2015 and the 2026 data cut-off. This counts patent families in the assignee ranking, which is the fairer unit than raw document counts because it neutralises continuation filings and multi-jurisdiction duplicates. The true current total is likely higher than shown, since publication typically lags filing by around 18 months, so the most recent one to two years are still incomplete.
No single company dominates: the leading assignee holds 212 families, and the top 5 assignees combined account for only 930 records, or 7.1% of all 13,091 records in scope. The top 10 reach 11.5% combined. That spread indicates a fragmented field where most of the filing activity sits outside the ranked leaders, spanning semiconductor equipment makers, electronics manufacturers and industrial process companies.
Filings peaked in 2019 at 434 records and have declined since, with a 29% drop from 349 filings in 2021 to 247 in 2024. That is the most recent year with largely complete publication data. Because publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, the lower counts shown for 2025 and 2026 reflect incomplete data rather than a confirmed further slowdown.
The IPC composition shows heavy overlap with semiconductor processing and materials equipment. H05B (electric heating circuits) is the largest class at 14.6% of records, followed by H01L (semiconductor devices) at 9.5%, and C23C (coating and surface deposition) and G01N (material testing) each at 7.1%. Plastics shaping (B29C) and crystal growth (C30B) also appear, showing resistance heating is filed as a supporting technology across several distinct manufacturing stacks rather than as one standalone category.
US20170034874A1, filed by Edwards Vacuum LLC in February 2017, covers a fault-detection method for a group of electric heaters in process equipment: it measures resistance across the heater group, compares it to a reference value, and flags a fault condition when the deviation exceeds a set threshold. This is a diagnostic and control claim rather than a heater-element design claim, so it primarily constrains monitoring and control systems built around grouped resistance heaters, not the underlying heating element design itself.
Answers are grounded in the same dataset. Derived from a Patsnap search on Electric Process Heat: Resistance Process Heater Patent Landscape covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-07-31. Counts reflect published records only and shift as new filings publish.Run this in Eureka MCP
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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.