Fused and Sintered Alumina Abrasive Grain Patents: Leaders & Trends 2026
- One filer dominates the ranked field. the leader holds 95 records against a fifth-place company at 11 and a tenth-place company at 2, a steep drop from the top down through a long tail of single-digit filers.
- Filing has gone quiet, not necessarily cooled. 2021 filings fell to zero by 2024 on the data available, a -100% span, but publication lag of roughly 18 months means 2025-2026 figures are still filling in and should not be read as a verdict yet.
- Claims cluster tightly around grinding tool classes. B24D covers 75.5% of the 229 records in scope and C09K another 52.0%, leaving polymer-composition and fibre-feature classes comparatively thin.
Filing growth compares 2021 (9 records) with 2024 (0) — 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
This landscape maps 229 published records filed against a search built on fused alumina grain, sol-gel alumina and abrasive grain production, cross-matched against seeded gel, microcrystalline structure, grain toughness, friability index, titania addition and grain grading terms. The scope runs from 2015 through the mid-2026 data cut-off, so it captures both the mature sintered sol-gel filament art and more recent grading and toughness-control filings. Patent families, not raw document counts, are the fairer unit here, and the assignee ranking is built on that family basis.
The field's foundational claims sit on sintered sol-gel alumina filaments dating back to the early 1990s, and those documents still carry the heaviest citation weight in the corpus. Newer filings tend to narrow into grading, friability control and composite reinforcement rather than restate the base filament chemistry, which is one reason the technology composition skews so heavily toward the grinding-tool and materials-science classes rather than polymer or fibre classes.
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Filing trend and technology composition
Two views of the same 229-record corpus: filing activity by year, and where those records sit across IPC subclasses. Because a single record can carry several IPC codes, the subclass shares below add up to well over 100% of the record total.
Filing trend: a sharp peak, then a decline the data can't yet fully explain
Filings peaked at 19 in 2017 and had fallen to zero recorded filings by 2024, a -100% move over the 2021-2024 span. Because publication typically lags filing by around 18 months, the 2025 and 2026 counts are still incomplete and should not be read as confirmation that activity has stopped — only that the last complete year on record shows none.
Technology composition: concentrated in grinding tools and functional materials
B24D (grinding tools & abrasives) appears in 75.5% of the 229 records and C09K (materials for miscellaneous applications) in 52.0%, making these two classes the backbone of the field. C04B (ceramics, cement & refractories) sits at 28.4%, while C09C, C08J, B24B, C08L and D01F each cover under 13% of records, marking them as narrower, more specialised branches rather than core claim territory.
Shares are the percentage of the 229 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
Go deeper on Fused and Sintered Alumina Abrasive Grain with Eureka
This page is one run against one query. Ask Eureka your own question about fused and sintered alumina abrasive grain and every answer comes back with the patent numbers behind it.
Try EurekaThe documents anchoring this field
EP0395091B1 — Sintered sol-gel alumina based filament
A sintered sol gel alumina based filament made up predominantly of fine alpha alumina crystals, a method of making same and use or the filament as abrasive particle and reinforcement of composite materials.Filed by Norton Company, granted 1996-12-18. This document sits at the root of the sintered sol-gel filament family and is the closest thing this corpus has to a foundational claim.
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | US5009676A | Sintered sol gel alumina abrasive filaments | 315 |
| 2 | US5863308A | Low temperature bond for abrasive tools | 299 |
| 3 | US5776214A | Method for making abrasive grain and abrasive articles | 250 |
| 4 | US5129919A | Bonded abrasive products containing sintered sol gel alumina abrasive filaments | 239 |
| 5 | US5035723A | Bonded abrasive products containing sintered sol gel alumina abrasive filaments | 222 |
| 6 | US5779743A | Method for making abrasive grain and abrasive articles | 220 |
| 7 | US5194072A | Sintered sol gel alumina abrasive filaments | 216 |
| 8 | US3387957A | Microcrystalline sintered bauxite abrasive grain | 186 |
| 9 | US5244477A | Sintered sol gel alumina abrasive filaments | 171 |
| 10 | US5185012A | Coated abrasive material containing abrasive filaments | 147 |
Citation counts reward older documents simply for having been in circulation longer; treat them as a measure of influence within this corpus, not as a ranking of current commercial relevance.
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 decision
Three signals worth weighing before drafting claims in this space: how concentrated the leadership is, how the technology splits across IPC classes, and how citation-heavy the founding documents are.
One filer, then a steep drop
The ranked leader holds 95 records; by fifth place that falls to 11, and by tenth place to 2. That gap suggests the core sintered-filament and grading claims are largely occupied by one company, with everyone else filing narrower, adjacent improvements.
Grinding-tool claims dominate the corpus
B24D and C09K together cover the large majority of records, meaning most drafting activity treats the grain as part of a grinding tool or a functional material rather than as a standalone chemical composition.
Founding filaments still carry the most influence
The five most-cited records all trace back to sintered sol-gel alumina filament work from the early 1990s. Their citation counts are a function of decades in circulation as much as ongoing relevance, so newer filings should be checked directly rather than assumed to be downstream of these.
A quiet stretch, read with caution
Every tracked assignee shows zero filings in the latest recorded year, and the leading Saint-Gobain entities show a -100% year-on-year change. Given the ~18-month publication lag, this reads as a data-visibility gap as much as a genuine pullback.
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to fused and sintered alumina abrasive grain, with the prior art for and against each one.
Who holds the field, and where the gate sits
The ranking runs 22 companies deep, from a single company holding 95 records down to entrants with a handful each. Reading it as a gate rather than a scoreboard: heavy filing in the top classes means new claims need to route around dense prior art, while thin classes are where a first mover can still stake unambiguous ground.
A single dominant filer
One company holds close to nine times the record count of the fifth-place filer, spanning the core sintered sol-gel filament claims and their direct successors. Its co-assignee pairing with a related regional entity, at a strength of 52 pairs, points to a deliberate multi-jurisdiction filing strategy rather than incidental overlap.
A wide field of narrow filers
Beyond the top few positions, most of the 22 ranked companies hold single-digit record counts. That pattern is typical of a field where the foundational chemistry is locked up and later entrants file narrow process or grading improvements instead.
A university-industry pairing stands out
A Chinese university and an abrasives manufacturer co-file as a pair, a smaller but distinct pattern from the dominant industrial cluster. It signals applied research being routed directly into commercial filings rather than published independently.
| Assignee | Recent year | YoY |
|---|---|---|
| Norton Company | 0 | — |
| Saint-Gobain Abrasives, Inc. | 0 | -100% |
| Saint-Gobain Abrasifs SA | 0 | -100% |
| The Carborundum Company | 0 | — |
| Washington Mills Management | 0 | — |
| 3M Company | 0 | — |
| Qingdao University of Technology | 0 | — |
| Qingdao SISA Abrasives Co., Ltd. | 0 | — |
Where to take this
The dataset points to a field with a dominant historical filer and several narrow, less-contested branches. The next step is turning that into a concrete filing or freedom-to-operate position.
Map claims against the dominant filer's portfolio
Before drafting in the sintered sol-gel filament space, check any new claim directly against the leading filer's 95-record portfolio and its co-assigned regional entity, since together they hold the densest concentration of prior art in this corpus.
Explore the assignee ranking in EurekaTest white-space branches for real headroom
Friability-index control, titania-doped grading and composite reinforcement classes carry a fraction of the records that B24D and C09K do. Run a focused prior-art search on the specific branch before assuming it's open.
Run a white-space search in EurekaTreat 2025-2026 filing counts as provisional
Given the roughly 18-month publication lag, don't conclude from the recent zero-filing years that activity has stopped. Revisit the trend once later filing years have had time to publish.
Track filing trends in EurekaCommon questions on this field
One company leads the ranked field with 95 records, well ahead of the fifth-place filer at 11 and the tenth-place filer at 2. That leader's portfolio, together with a closely related regional entity it frequently co-files with, covers the foundational sintered sol-gel alumina filament claims dating back to the early 1990s. The remaining 22 ranked companies each hold comparatively small counts, forming a long tail of narrower process and grading improvements rather than competing base chemistry claims.
Filings peaked at 19 in 2017 and the most recent complete year shows the total down to zero, a -100% change over the 2021-2024 span. However, publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, so the 2025 and 2026 figures in this dataset are still incomplete and should not be treated as proof that filing activity has genuinely stopped. A fairer read is that the field has gone quiet in the visible record, with the real trend for the most recent years still to emerge.
EP0395091B1, filed by Norton Company, claims a sintered sol-gel alumina based filament composed predominantly of fine alpha alumina crystals, along with a method of making it and its use as an abrasive particle or as reinforcement in composite materials. It is one of the founding documents in this citation network, and later filings in the sintered filament space generally build on or narrow this base claim rather than replace it. Anyone drafting new claims on sintered alumina filaments should review it directly rather than rely on secondary summaries.
The densest claim territory sits in B24D (grinding tools & abrasives) and C09K (functional materials), which together cover the large majority of the 229 records in scope. Classes tied to friability-index control, titania-doped grading fractions, polymer-composite reinforcement and fibre-feature filaments each cover a much smaller share of records, making them the more promising areas to search before assuming prior art blocks a new claim. That said, thin coverage in this dataset is not a guarantee of true openness — it reflects what this search string captured, not the full universe of filings.
The ranking includes 22 companies, and the gap between the top position and the rest is steep: 95 records for the leader against 11 for fifth place and 2 for tenth. A precise concentration percentage isn't calculable from the ranking and record-total figures available here, since they're measured in different units, but the shape of the distribution — one dominant filer, then a fast drop-off, then a long tail — is clear from the ranking itself.
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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.