Heat Pumps Patents: Top Companies, Trends & White Space 2026
- 10.7% of all 54,638 records sit with the five leading assignees — concentration exists but a long tail of single- and low-count filers still accounts for the vast majority of the field.
- Filing volume held roughly flat, -5% from 996 records in 2021 to 944 in 2024, the most recent year that can be treated as complete under an 18-month publication lag.
- F25B carries 10.0% of records far ahead of the next subclass, showing that core refrigeration-cycle claims are the densest single layer in the landscape, not ancillary control or materials claims.
Filing growth compares 2021 (996 records) with 2024 (944) — 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. Top-5 share is the combined record count of the five largest assignees divided by all 54,638 records in scope (CR5), not by the ranked leaders only.
What the heat pump patent record actually covers
The search set spans 54,638 published records filed against heat pump cycles, working-fluid control and adjacent thermal-management claims between 2015 and the 2026 data cut-off. It is a broad technical bucket by design: refrigerant circuits, air-conditioning control, domestic water heating and even body-fluid thermal devices all cite the same core mechanical vocabulary — evaporator, condenser, working fluid, temperature sensor — so the corpus mixes appliance-level heat pump cycles with medical and industrial thermal-cycle claims that use the same language.
That breadth matters for anyone using this as a freedom-to-operate signal. A record carrying an F25B refrigeration classification is not necessarily a residential heat pump; it may be an industrial refrigerant circuit, a medical thermal-control device, or a power-plant working-fluid claim. The IPC composition below should be read as where claim density sits across the whole bucket, not as a breakdown of consumer heat pump products alone.
Filing trend and technology composition
Two views of the same 54,638-record set: how filing volume has moved year over year, and how records distribute across the IPC subclasses that carry the underlying technical claims.
Filing trend, 2017–2026
Published records rose from 847 in 2017 to a peak of 1,139 in 2022, then eased to 944 by 2024 — a -5% move from the 2021 level of 996. 2025 and 2026 figures are still filling in under the roughly 18-month publication lag and should not be read as a decline.
Technology composition by IPC subclass
F25B (refrigeration & heat pumps) leads at 10.0% of the 54,638 records in scope, roughly three times the share of F24F (air conditioning & ventilation) at 3.3%. F01K, F24D, C09K, A61M, F28D and F24H each sit between 2% and 3%, indicating claim activity spread thinly across steam/thermal power, domestic heating, working-fluid materials, medical fluid devices and heat-exchange hardware rather than concentrated in a second dominant class.
Shares are the percentage of the 54,638 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
Go deeper on Heat Pumps Patent Landscape with Eureka
This page is one run against one query. Ask Eureka your own question about heat pumps patent landscape and every answer comes back with the patent numbers behind it.
Try EurekaA representative claim: heat pump cycle inside a clothes-treating appliance
US10240276B2 — Clothes treating apparatus with heat pump cycle and method for controlling the same
A clothes treating apparatus that includes a heat pump cycle and a dehumidifying device is provided herein. The clothes treating apparatus may include a case and a drum installed within the case and configured to accommodate an item for drying. A circulation duct may be provided to form an air circulation flow channel that allows air to circulate through the drum. The heat pump cycle may include an evaporator and a condenser disposed to be spaced apart from one another within the circulation duct, the heat pump cycle being configured to absorb heat of air released from the drum through the evaporator and transmit the absorbed heat to air introduced to the drum through the condenser, by using…Abstract truncated as published; filed by LG Electronics, granted 2019-03-26.
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | US20130201316A1 | System and method for server based control | 1,727 |
| 2 | US5359993A | Apparatus for counting the number of times a medical instrument has been used | 1,435 |
| 3 | US9044261B2 | Temperature controlled ultrasonic surgical instruments | 1,410 |
| 4 | US20060264831A1 | Portable therapy delivery device with fluid delivery | 1,177 |
| 5 | US6409722B1 | Apparatus and method for creating, maintaining, and controlling a virtual electrode used for the ablation of … | 1,103 |
| 6 | US6506189B1 | Cool-tip electrode thermosurgery system | 1,096 |
| 7 | US6537272B2 | Apparatus and method for creating, maintaining, and controlling a virtual electrode used for the ablation of … | 1,026 |
| 8 | US6176323B1 | Drilling systems with sensors for determining properties of drilling fluid downhole | 861 |
| 9 | US7169144B2 | Apparatus and method for creating, maintaining, and controlling a virtual electrode used for the ablation of … | 763 |
| 10 | US20150224845A1 | Active vehicle suspension system | 700 |
Citation counts favour older records simply because they have had longer to accumulate citations inside the searched corpus — treat this table as a signal of historical influence, not of current commercial importance.
Each row carries its publication number; clicking a row searches Eureka by that number.
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Three readings of the same dataset, each pointed at a different question a filing or freedom-to-operate team actually needs answered.
Leadership is real but thin
The five leading assignees together account for 10.7% of all records, and the top ten only reach 15.9%. That is enough to show a durable set of active filers, but it leaves the large majority of the corpus to entities outside the ranked leaders — this is not a field with a dominant gatekeeper.
Volume has plateaued, not collapsed
Records peaked at 1,139 in 2022 and settled at 944 by 2024, a modest -5% move from the 2021 level. Because publication lags filing by about 18 months, 2025–2026 numbers are still incomplete and should not be read as a further drop.
One subclass carries the core claims
F25B holds roughly three times the share of the next-largest subclass, F24F. The remaining subclasses — steam/thermal power, domestic heating, working-fluid materials, medical fluid devices, heat exchangers, water heaters — each sit in the 2-3% band, meaning the field's technical weight sits in the refrigeration cycle itself rather than in any single downstream application.
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to heat pumps patent landscape, with the prior art for and against each one.
Assignee landscape: a ranked field, not a duopoly
The ranking covers 100 companies across the full record set. The leader holds 1,442 records, fifth place 827, and tenth place 446 — a steady taper rather than a cliff, consistent with the top-10 share of 15.9% of all 54,638 records.
A clear but not dominant leader
The top-ranked assignee holds 1,442 records against a field of 54,638 — a meaningful lead over rank five (827) and rank ten (446), but nowhere near a majority share of the corpus.
Gradual drop-off through the ranked leaders
The gap between fifth and tenth place is a steady taper rather than a sharp cliff, suggesting a genuine competitive set of active filers below the leader rather than a single runner-up.
Corporate family filings, not joint ventures
The strongest co-assignee pairs reflect parent-subsidiary filing structures (medical device and regional entities filing jointly) rather than cross-company collaboration, so they should be read as corporate structure signals, not partnership activity.
| Assignee | Recent year | YoY |
|---|---|---|
| The Chemours Company FC, LLC | 2 | -93% |
| DEKA Products Limited Partnership | 2 | -33% |
| Baxter International Inc. | 1 | -88% |
| Baxter Healthcare SA | 1 | -88% |
| Carrier Corporation | 1 | -91% |
| General Electric Company | 1 | -80% |
| Mitsubishi Electric Corporation | 0 | — |
| Daikin Industries, Ltd. | 0 | -100% |
Where to take this analysis
The dataset points to specific follow-up work depending on whether the goal is freedom-to-operate, licensing, or R&D scoping.
Check claim scope against the representative filing
Any new heat pump cycle design involving a dehumidifying drum path or evaporator-condenser spacing within a circulation duct should be checked against the representative record and its family before committing to a design.
Explore full claim scope in EurekaMap the under-claimed branches before filing
The gate chips above point to sub-areas with comparatively thin filing density; a fuller design-around or whitespace check should confirm this before scoping new claims.
Run a whitespace search in EurekaTrack the ranked leaders' recent momentum
Several leading assignees show sharp year-on-year drops in the latest partial year; given the publication lag, this is more likely reporting delay than a real pullback and is worth re-checking in six months.
Set up assignee monitoring in EurekaCommon questions about the heat pump patent landscape
Across the ranked field of 100 assignees, the leading company holds 1,442 records out of 54,638 in scope, with fifth place at 827 and tenth at 446. That taper shows a real but not dominant leadership position — the top five assignees combined hold only 10.7% of all records, and the top ten reach 15.9%. Most of the corpus sits outside this ranked group, spread across a long tail of single- and low-count filers, so leadership in this field is contested rather than concentrated in one or two names.
Filing volume rose from 847 records in 2017 to a peak of 1,139 in 2022, then settled at 944 by 2024 — a -5% move from the 2021 level of 996. That is best read as a plateau after a growth phase, not a decline. Publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, so the 2025 and 2026 figures in any dataset are always going to look lower than they will once filings catch up, and should not be used to call a downward trend.
F25B, refrigeration and heat pumps, is the leading IPC subclass at 10.0% of the 54,638 records in scope — roughly three times the share of the next largest, F24F (air conditioning and ventilation) at 3.3%. Because a single record can carry several IPC classes, these shares add up to more than 100% and should not be summed together. The remaining subclasses connected to steam/thermal power, domestic heating, working-fluid materials, medical fluid devices, heat exchangers and water heaters each sit in a narrower 2-3% band, showing that filing weight concentrates in the refrigeration cycle itself rather than any single downstream application.
The most-cited records in this corpus are older filings that have simply had more time to accumulate citations inside the searched dataset, so a high count signals historical influence rather than current commercial relevance. Citation counts inside any bounded corpus favour older records almost mechanically; a recent filing with few citations may still be commercially important. Use citation rank as a starting point for prior-art review, not as a proxy for which technology is winning today.
Relative to the dense core refrigeration-cycle claims under F25B, several adjacent branches show thinner filing activity — variable-speed compressor control logic, low-GWP refrigerant blends for retrofit systems, waste-heat recovery integration with domestic water heaters, multi-zone airflow balancing sensors, and hybrid electric-thermal working fluid circuits. High filing density in the core cycle claims means that space is occupied, not that it is exhausted of value, but it does mean new entrants are generally better served filing in the less-crowded adjacent branches than trying to design around the densest claim area directly.
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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.