Froth Flotation Cell Design Patents: Top Companies & Trends 2026
Froth flotation cell design patents: who is filing, and where the claim space is still open
20.0% of the field sits with five companies. 977 of 4,896 records in scope belong to the top five assignees, with a longer tail spread across the remaining ranked leaders. Filings ran from 215 in 2017 to a peak of 411 in 2018. The 2021-to-2024 window, the most recent period that can be read as complete once publication lag is accounted for, shows a decline from 214 to 122 filings — a 43% drop. Figures for 2025 and 2026 are still incomplete and should not be read as a continuation of that decline.
- 1METSO OUTOTEC FINLAND OY6.9%
- 2CIDRA CORP SERVICES INC6.3%
- 3F L SMIDTH & CO AS2.6%
- 4NUSEED GLOBAL INNOVATION LTD2.1%
- 5SHELL INTERNATIONALE RESEARCH MAATSCHAPPIJ BV1.9%
See the full froth flotation cell design 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 on froth flotation cell design patents
Who holds the most patents in froth flotation cell design?
One assignee leads the ranked list with 340 records, well ahead of the fifth-placed company at 95. The top five assignees combined hold 977 records, which is 20.0% of the 4,896 records in scope, and the top ten hold 27.3%. That leaves a long tail of companies with only a handful of filings each, so leadership at the top does not mean the field is closed to new entrants.
Is froth flotation patent filing activity growing or shrinking?
Filings peaked in 2018 at 411 and have declined since. Looking at the most recent complete years, 2021 to 2024, filings fell from 214 to 122, a 43% drop. Figures for 2025 and 2026 appear lower still, but that is largely an artefact of publication lag — patent applications typically take around 18 months to publish, so recent years always look artificially thin until the data catches up.
What patent classes cover froth flotation cell hardware?
The core classification is B03D (flotation), covering 40.9% of the 4,896 records in scope. But a large share of the same corpus also falls under C22B (metal extraction and refining, 20.2%), C02F (water and wastewater treatment, 15.1%), B01D (separation processes, 14.3%) and smaller shares of B03B, C10G, B01F and C01B. Because a single record can carry multiple IPC classes, these figures overlap rather than sum to 100%, and a freedom-to-operate search limited to B03D alone would miss a substantial part of the relevant prior art.
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 Froth Flotation Cell Design 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.