Fiber Laser Cutting Patents: Who Leads, Where the Gaps Are 2026
Fiber Laser Cutting of Metals Patents: Concentration, Trends and Open Claim Space
69.7% of all 264 records sit with the top five assignees, with one leader holding 81 records on its own — a field with a dominant filer, not a fragmented one. Filings ran at 27 in 2017, climbed to a peak of 33 in 2021, then fell to 4 by 2024 — an 88% decline across that three-year span. Because publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, 2025 and 2026 figures are undercounts still in the process of filling in, not evidence of a further slowdown.
- 1BYSTRONIC LASER AG81
- 2HYPERTHERM INC39
- 3LILLBACKA JETAIR25
- 4PRECITEC GMBH21
- 5PRECITEC ITM18
See the full fiber laser cutting of metals 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
Frequently asked questions
Who holds the most patents in fiber laser cutting of metals?
The dataset’s top-ranked assignee holds 81 of the 264 records in scope, well ahead of the fifth-place holder at 18. The top five assignees combined account for 69.7% of all records, so filing activity is heavily concentrated rather than spread evenly across the sixty companies in the ranking. Anyone assessing freedom to operate should focus first on that leading handful rather than treating the field as fragmented.
Is fiber laser cutting patent activity still growing?
No — filings peaked at 33 in 2021 and had fallen to 4 by 2024, an 88% decline across that span. Because publication typically lags filing by around 18 months, the very latest years in any dataset will always look lower than they eventually turn out to be, so 2025 and 2026 counts should not be read as continued decline. Taken together, the pattern looks like a technology that has moved past its most active claim-staking period into consolidation.
What technical areas get the most patent claims in this field?
B23K, covering welding, soldering and brazing, appears in 87.1% of the 264 records and is by far the dominant classification. Control and regulating systems (G05B) and machine-tool fittings (B23Q) follow at 17.4% and 8.7% respectively, with smaller shares in image processing, data processing, plasma systems and optics. This tells you that most protected ground is on the physical cutting mechanism itself, with software and sensing layers comparatively less claimed.
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 Fiber Laser Cutting of Metals 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.