Electrospray and Micropropulsion Patents: Who Leads, Gaps 2026
Electrospray and micropropulsion patents: who leads and where the claim space still opens up
67.8% concentration. The top five assignees hold 61 of 90 records in scope — filing here is already dominated by a small group, not a wide field of independent entrants. Filings ran from 3 in 2017 up to a peak of 16 in 2018, then eased off; the 2021-to-2024 span alone fell 83%, from 6 records to 1. Treat 2025 and 2026 as incomplete rather than as evidence the field has stalled.
- 1MASSACHUSETTS INST OF TECH27
- 2ACCION SYSTEMS INC11
- 3MORPHEUS SPACE GMBH11
- 4CALIFORNIA INST OF TECH8
- 5THE GOVERNMENT OF THE UNITED STATES AS REPRESENTED BY THE SECRETARY OF THE AIR FORCE4
See the full electrospray and micropropulsion 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 about electrospray and micropropulsion patents
Who holds the most electrospray and micropropulsion patents?
One assignee leads the ranked field with 27 records, well ahead of the fifth-place holder at 4 and the tenth-place holder at 3. The leading names include university research offices such as MIT and Caltech, a US Air Force-affiliated filer, and commercial thruster makers including Accion Systems, Busek and Morpheus Space. Because the top five assignees together account for 67.8% of all 90 records in scope, competitive tracking should focus on that small group rather than the full ranked list of 23 companies.
Is patent filing in electrospray propulsion growing or slowing?
Filings peaked at 16 in 2018 and have declined since, with the 2021-to-2024 span alone falling 83% from 6 records to 1. That said, 2025 and 2026 figures are still incomplete because publication typically lags filing by around 18 months, so the true recent trend is likely stronger than the raw chart shows. Anyone using this data for a strategic call should treat the last one to two years as provisional rather than confirmed decline.
What does US11801949B2 actually cover?
US11801949B2, assigned to Morpheus Space and granted in 2023, claims a field emission propulsion system with a control unit that sets an individual extractor-electrode voltage for each emitter in a field-arranged array. The claim scope centres on per-emitter voltage calibration and control rather than on emitter geometry or propellant chemistry itself. Anyone designing a competing thruster with individually addressable extractor voltages should review this claim set specifically rather than assume it only covers Morpheus’s own hardware configuration.
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 Electrospray and Micropropulsion 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.