Electrothermal Ice Protection Patents: Leaders & Filing Trends 2026
- One filer dominates the ranked field. the leading assignee accounts for 83 records against a fifth-place figure of 16, a gap the rest of the ranked group never closes.
- Filing has cooled from its 2018 peak. activity peaked at 21 records in 2018 and the last complete comparison shows 2021's 10 filings falling to 3 by 2024, a -70% move over that span.
- Claims cluster tightly around two IPC classes. B64D aircraft equipment and H05B electric heating circuits appear in 73.9% and 32.0% of the 241 records in scope, leaving structural and power-supply angles comparatively open.
Filing growth compares 2021 (10 records) with 2024 (3) — 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.
What electrothermal ice protection patents cover
Electrothermal ice protection replaces pneumatic and fluid-based de-icing with resistive heating elements — heater mats, sprayed-metal heaters and emerging carbon-nanotube layers — bonded to wing, engine-inlet and rotor surfaces. The claim space spans the physical heater construction, the parting strip geometry that separates de-icing zones from anti-icing zones, and the control logic that cycles power to manage cyclic shedding and avoid heater-element delamination. This dataset draws on 241 published records filed against that combined vocabulary.
Because publication lags filing by roughly eighteen months, the 2025-2026 counts in any trend view are still filling in and should not be read as a real drop in activity.
Filing trend and technology composition
The record set spans 2015 to the 2026 cut-off, with IPC classification pulled per record so a single filing can carry several technology tags.
Filings rose to a 2018 peak, then eased
Annual filings ran from 9 in 2017 to a peak of 21 in 2018. Using the last comparison the dataset supports as complete, 2021's 10 filings fell to 3 by 2024 — a -70% move — and years after 2024 are too recent to read as a continued decline given publication lag.
Two classes carry most of the claim weight
B64D (aircraft equipment) appears on 73.9% of the 241 records and H05B (electric heating circuits) on 32.0%, confirming that most filings pair an airframe-integration claim with a heating-circuit claim. Smaller classes — B29C shaping of plastics, F02C gas-turbine plants, G01N material testing, B32B laminates, H02J power supply and B60L electric propulsion — each sit under 8% and mark narrower, less-contested claim territory.
Shares are the percentage of the 241 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
Go deeper on Electrothermal Ice Protection with Eureka
This page is one run against one query. Ask Eureka your own question about electrothermal ice protection and every answer comes back with the patent numbers behind it.
Try EurekaA representative claim: adjustable parting strips
Adjustable ice protection system parting strip
An electrothermal ice protection system installed on an aircraft includes a sensor, a parting strip assembly, and a controller. The sensor monitors a direction of local incident airflow. The parting strip assembly is coupled to the critical surface and includes multiple heating sections. The controller determines the direction of surface airflow and selectively concentrates power to at least one targeted heating section relative to the others, rather than treating the parting strip as a fixed, uniformly powered zone.Filed by Goodrich Corporation, published 2023-06-01.
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | US20080166563A1 | Electrothermal heater made from thermally conducting electrically insulating polymer material | 97 |
| 2 | US20160221680A1 | Uniform Heat Distribution in Resistive Heaters For Anti-Icing and De-Icing | 93 |
| 3 | US20100243811A1 | Ice protection heater system | 58 |
| 4 | US20080099617A1 | Ice Protection of Aerodynamic Surfaces | 58 |
| 5 | US20090149997A1 | Ice protection system | 45 |
| 6 | US20100282910A1 | Power control system | 43 |
| 7 | US20150346122A1 | Apparatus and method for detecting water or ice | 37 |
| 8 | WO2007107732A1 | Ice protection system | 37 |
| 9 | EP1715159A1 | Aircraft engine nacelle inlet having access opening for electrical ice protection system | 37 |
| 10 | WO2006085054A1 | Ice protection of aerodynamic surfaces | 36 |
Citation counts reward older filings that have had longer to accumulate references, so treat this table as a map of influence rather than a ranking of current-best technology.
Each row carries its publication number; clicking a row searches Eureka by that number.
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Three patterns stand out once records are grouped by assignee, class and year rather than read one at a time.
One filer sets the pace, the rest trail well behind
The leading assignee's 83 records dwarf the fifth-ranked figure of 16, and the count keeps thinning toward the tenth position at 6. That gap suggests a single filer built a broad claim thicket early and others have been filing around it rather than matching its volume.
Activity has eased from its 2018 high
Filings peaked at 21 in 2018 and the confirmed comparison window shows a -70% move from 10 in 2021 to 3 in 2024. Years beyond 2024 are still filling in due to publication lag, so this should be read as a cooling from a high base rather than a field going quiet.
Airframe integration claims dominate the mix
Nearly three in four records tag B64D aircraft equipment, with H05B electric heating circuits the only other class above 30%. Everything else — plastics shaping, gas-turbine integration, material testing, laminates, power supply and electric propulsion — sits under 8%, marking where claim density is thin.
Filing activity is split across three roughly equal blocs
The United States, United Kingdom and European Patent Office each receive filings in a similar range, with Austria, Germany and the WIPO PCT route following behind. That spread points to a field prosecuted for multi-jurisdiction aerospace supply chains rather than one dominated by a single national office.
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to electrothermal ice protection, with the prior art for and against each one.
Who is filing, and where the gaps sit
The ranked assignee list runs 20 companies deep, topped by a single dominant filer with a long tail of smaller and individual filers behind it.
A broad early claim base
The top-ranked assignee's record count is roughly five times the fifth-place figure, consistent with a filer that staked out heater-mat and parting-strip claims early and has kept extending them across airframe and control-logic variations.
A thinning mid-tier rather than a second leader
No single challenger approaches the leader's volume; instead the ranking thins steadily from fifth to tenth place, suggesting several established aerospace suppliers hold defensive positions rather than one clear number-two.
Individual inventors filing alongside corporates
Some of the strongest co-assignee pairings in this dataset link individual named inventors to each other rather than to a corporate assignee, a pattern more common in early-stage or spin-out filings than in mature supplier portfolios.
| Assignee | Recent year | YoY |
|---|---|---|
| Ultra Electronics Ltd | 0 | — |
| GKN Aerospace Services Ltd | 0 | — |
| Rohr, Inc. | 0 | — |
| The Boeing Company | 0 | — |
| Battelle Memorial Institute | 0 | — |
| LEWIS STUART MARTIN | 0 | — |
| Goodrich Corporation | 0 | — |
| ENGLISH PETER | 0 | — |
Where to take this analysis next
The dataset points to specific follow-up questions rather than a single answer; each depends on what the reader is trying to decide.
Freedom-to-operate around the leader's portfolio
With one assignee holding 83 of the ranked records, any new heater-mat or parting-strip design should be checked against that portfolio specifically before checking the rest of the field.
Explore assignee claims in EurekaWatch the under-claimed branches
Carbon-nanotube heater layers, power-supply load management and delamination sensing all sit at low single-digit class shares — a first-mover claim there faces less prior art than another heater-mat filing.
Screen white space in EurekaRe-check 2025-2026 filings once publication catches up
The apparent cooling after 2021 rests on 2024 as the last complete year; revisit the trend once the 18-month publication lag closes on the most recent filings.
Track filing trends in EurekaElectrothermal ice protection patents: common questions
One assignee leads the ranked field with 83 records, well ahead of the fifth-place figure of 16 and the tenth-place figure of 6. This gap indicates a filer that established broad early coverage of heater-mat and parting-strip designs and has continued to extend it, rather than a field with several evenly matched leaders. The ranking covers 20 companies in total, so it should not be read as a top-50 or top-100 list — it is the full ranked set the underlying data returns.
Filings peaked at 21 in 2018 and the last year-pair that can be treated as complete shows a fall from 10 filings in 2021 to 3 in 2024, a -70% move. Because publication typically lags filing by around 18 months, the 2025 and 2026 counts in this dataset are still filling in and understate real filing activity. The honest reading is a cooling from a 2018 high rather than a field going quiet.
A parting strip is the section of an electrothermal ice protection system that runs along the leading edge and separates the de-icing zones, which shed ice cyclically, from the anti-icing zones, which stay continuously heated. Recent claims — including the representative record in this dataset, US20230166849A1 — move beyond a fixed, uniformly powered strip toward one that adjusts power to targeted heating sections based on sensed airflow direction. That shift from static to airflow-responsive control is one of the more active claim areas in current filings.
B64D, the aircraft equipment class, appears on 73.9% of the 241 records in this dataset, and H05B, electric heating and lighting circuits, appears on 32.0%, together forming the core of nearly every filing. Smaller classes — B29C plastics shaping, F02C gas-turbine plants, G01N material testing, B32B laminates, H02J power supply and B60L electric propulsion — each sit under 8% of records. Those smaller classes mark where claim density is lower and where a well-drafted filing faces less crowded prior art.
The patent, assigned to Goodrich Corporation and published mid-2023, claims a parting strip assembly with multiple heating sections controlled by a sensor-driven controller that concentrates power to specific targeted sections based on sensed airflow direction, rather than heating the strip uniformly. A new design that uses a fixed, uniformly powered parting strip is unlikely to fall within this claim, but any airflow-responsive, section-targeted power control on a parting strip should be checked against it closely. It does not block heater-mat designs outside the parting-strip context or fixed-power control schemes.
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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.