Icephobic Coating Patents: Top Companies & Filing Trends 2026
- Filing peaked in 2017 at 12 records and has not returned to that level since, with 2021→2024 filings down 75% — though 2025-26 figures are still filling in as publications lag filing by about 18 months.
- No single assignee dominates the field the ranked leader holds 20 records against a fifth-place count of 6, and the list of 14 ranked companies thins out fast into single- and double-digit filers.
- Coating chemistry classes outweigh application classes C09D and C09K together touch most of the 52 records in scope, while aircraft-specific claims under B64D sit at a quarter of records — a narrower, more contestable slice.
Filing growth compares 2021 (4 records) with 2024 (1) — 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 this landscape covers
Icephobic and anti-icing surface coatings sit at the intersection of polymer chemistry and applied surface engineering: reducing ice adhesion strength, promoting delamination, or preventing ice nucleation outright. This landscape covers 52 published records matching icephobic, anti-icing and superhydrophobic-icephobic coating language combined with functional or smart coating terms, filed between 2015 and mid-2026. The scope spans coating formulations (C09D, C09K), the polymer backbones and additives that carry them (C08G, C08L, C08K), and the application contexts where ice adhesion is a safety or performance problem — aircraft surfaces (B64D) and sporting equipment (A63B) among them.
Reading the field by patent family rather than raw publication count matters here: a single technology can generate multiple continuations or parallel filings across US, EPO and PCT routes, so family-level counts give a fairer picture of how many distinct inventions are actually in play versus how much paperwork surrounds a smaller set of core ideas.
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Filing trend and technology composition
Two views of the same 52-record dataset: how filing activity has moved year over year, and which IPC subclasses carry the claim density.
Filing activity has cooled from its 2017 peak
Filings peaked at 12 in 2017 and never returned to that level; the 2021-to-2024 span shows a 75% drop (4 down to 1). Treat 2025 and 2026 as incomplete rather than a continued decline — publication lag of roughly 18 months means recent filings are still arriving.
Coating chemistry classes lead application classes
C09D (coatings, paints & inks) appears in 53.8% of the 52 records and C09K (materials for miscellaneous applications) in 32.7%, ahead of the aircraft-specific B64D class at 25.0%. Polymer-composition classes C08G, C08L and C08K together indicate that a large share of the claim activity is happening at the material-formulation level rather than at the point of application.
Shares are the percentage of the 52 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
Go deeper on Functional & Smart Coatings — Icephobic Surface Coatings Patent Landscape with Eureka
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Try EurekaThe most-cited records in this field
Ice Removal Devices Including Icephobic Coatings
Icephobic coatings that reduce ice adhesion strength must also enable ice delamination to ensure effective ice removal, especially when adjacent areas are not coated with icephobic coatings in which case an ice bridging preventer must also exist. The resulting mechanical devices ensure ice removal by leveraging specific ice delamination propagation features of the icephobic coating.Filed by Hygratek LLC, published 2018-08-02. Notable for claiming the coating as one part of a mechanical ice-removal system rather than as a standalone material claim.
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | WO2016176350A1 | Durable icephobic surfaces | 47 |
| 2 | US20180127616A1 | Durable icephobic surfaces | 22 |
| 3 | US20190144122A1 | Methods and systems for self-lubricating icephobic elastomer coatings | 14 |
| 4 | US9078425B1 | Hot body decoy | 10 |
| 5 | US20200131375A1 | Anti-icing coatings | 9 |
| 6 | US20210395588A1 | Compositions and Methods for Inhibiting Ice Formation on Surfaces | 6 |
| 7 | US20230057214A1 | Conductive Anti-icing coating systems and methods | 6 |
| 8 | US20180215926A1 | Ice Removal Devices Including Icephobic Coatings | 5 |
| 9 | US9303456B1 | Power ice screw system and methods of use | 5 |
| 10 | US10465091B2 | Durable icephobic surfaces | 4 |
Citation counts reward earlier filings simply because they have had longer to accumulate references inside the searched corpus — read them as a signal of influence on subsequent filers, not as a measure of which patent is currently most important.
Each row carries its publication number; clicking a row searches Eureka by that number.
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Browse MCP servers →What the numbers mean for a filing strategy
Three read-outs from the trend, composition and citation data that matter more than the raw counts on their own.
The peak has passed, but the field is not dead
The 2017 peak of 12 records has not been matched since, and the 2021-2024 window shows a sharp decline. Because publication lags filing by around 18 months, the most recent years understate real activity — this is a field to re-check rather than write off.
A moderate leader, then a long tail
The ranked leader holds 20 records, more than three times the fifth-place count of 6, and the tenth-ranked assignee sits at just 2. Among 14 ranked companies, most of the field is single- or double-digit filers rather than a handful of dominant portfolios.
Formulation claims outnumber application claims
C09D and C09K together cover most of the 52 records, while B64D (aircraft equipment) sits at a quarter. That gap suggests the contested ground is the coating chemistry itself, with application-specific integration claims comparatively less crowded.
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to functional & smart coatings — icephobic surface coatings patent landscape, with the prior art for and against each one.
Who is filing, and where the collaboration clusters sit
The 14 ranked assignees range from a single leader with 20 records down to single-digit filers, with several university and individual-inventor names appearing alongside corporate ones — a sign that some of the underlying science is still moving out of research settings.
The ranked leader by record count
Holds more than three times the fifth-place count, but that gap has not translated into recent-year filing momentum — the leading names in the co-filing network show no new records in the latest year tracked.
A tight academic-inventor cluster
Three co-assignee pairs share 6 records apiece, all centred on the same small group of named inventors — a pattern consistent with a university lab whose output has been licensed or spun out rather than filed by a single corporate assignee alone.
Most assignees hold a handful of records
Past the leader and the mid-table, filing drops to single or low-double digits. That is typical of a field still absorbing new entrants rather than one locked up by a small number of blocking portfolios.
| Assignee | Recent year | YoY |
|---|---|---|
| The Boeing Company | 0 | — |
| The Regents of the University of Michigan | 0 | — |
| YEONG YONG HAN | 0 | — |
| SOKHEY JAGDISH S | 0 | — |
| MILIONIS ATHANASIOS | 0 | — |
| LOTH ERIC | 0 | — |
| FIORELLO ALBERT | 0 | — |
| Massachusetts Institute of Technology | 0 | — |
Where to take this analysis
The dataset points to specific next questions rather than a single conclusion — each one is worth running through a dedicated search before committing to a filing or design-around strategy.
Check the 2025-2026 filings once they publish
The current trend understates recent activity because of publication lag. Re-run this search in six to twelve months to see whether the post-2021 decline has genuinely continued or is an artefact of the reporting window.
Re-check filing trends in Eureka →Map the co-assignee cluster in detail
The strongest co-filing pairs all sit inside one small inventor group. Understanding whether that IP has been licensed, assigned, or is still independently held changes how a design-around should be approached.
Explore assignee relationships in Eureka →Test claim scope on the under-claimed sub-areas
Ice-bridging prevention and self-lubricating elastomer topcoats show thinner coverage than the core coating-chemistry classes. A targeted novelty search on these branches is a faster path to freedom-to-operate than contesting the crowded C09D space.
Run a novelty search in Eureka →Common questions about icephobic coating patents
Among the 14 ranked assignees in this dataset, one company leads with 20 records, more than three times the fifth-place count of 6. Behind that leader is a long tail of single- and low-double-digit filers, including university research groups and individual inventors, so no single company controls the field outright. Anyone evaluating freedom-to-operate should look at the leader's specific claim scope rather than assume broad blocking coverage across the whole technology.
Filing peaked at 12 records in 2017 and has not returned to that level since; the 2021-to-2024 window shows a 75% decline, from 4 records down to 1. However, patent publication typically lags the actual filing date by around 18 months, so 2025 and 2026 figures are still incomplete and should not yet be read as confirmation of a continued decline. The honest read is that the field cooled after 2017 but current-year activity is not yet visible in this data.
In this dataset the two terms are used together in search scope rather than treated as strictly distinct categories, and most records span multiple IPC classes covering both the coating chemistry and its application. Icephobic language tends to emphasise reduced ice adhesion strength and delamination behaviour, as seen in the representative record on ice removal devices, while anti-icing framing more often appears alongside prevention of ice formation outright. Practically, claim drafters should expect examiners to treat the two as closely related prior art rather than separate fields.
The IPC composition shows coating-chemistry classes (C09D, C09K) carrying the largest share of the 52 records in scope, ahead of aircraft equipment (B64D) at a quarter of records and sports equipment (A63B) at under ten percent. This indicates that a large share of patenting activity happens at the material-formulation level, with aviation being the most visible but not the only downstream application. Receiving-office data shows the United States and Europe as the largest filing venues, with WIPO PCT, Canada, Australia and Germany also represented.
The IPC data shows aircraft-specific and sporting-equipment application claims (B64D, A63B) are considerably thinner than the core coating-chemistry classes, and coating-process claims under B05D sit at under ten percent of records. Ice-bridging prevention mechanisms and self-lubricating elastomer topcoat architectures also appear less contested relative to general formulation claims. A first claim in these areas would likely focus on a specific mechanical or process integration of an icephobic material rather than the material chemistry itself, which is the more crowded ground.
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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.