Hot Strip Mill Rolling Schedule Patents: Who Leads 2026
- 40.3% concentration at the top. The top 5 assignees hold 225 of the 559 records in scope — core rolling-force and gauge-control claims sit with a small group of established filers.
- B21B dominates at 89.4%. Nearly nine in ten records classify under metal rolling, leaving heat treatment, alloy and optical-measurement branches comparatively open.
- Filing has gone quiet at the top. Several of the largest legacy assignees show zero filings in the most recent year, even though their core claims remain in force.
Top-5 share is the combined record count of the five largest assignees divided by all 559 records in scope (CR5), not by the ranked leaders only.
What this landscape covers
This landscape covers 559 published records filed against hot strip mill rolling schedule claims — spanning rolling-force models, interstand tension control, gauge control and temperature-drop compensation — filtered from records that mention a hot strip mill, hot rolling schedule or hot finishing mill alongside pass-schedule or load-distribution language. The scope runs from 2015 through the partial 2026 filing year.
Filing here is not evenly spread. A small group of steelmakers and equipment builders account for a disproportionate share of the ranked records, and nearly nine in ten records sit inside a single IPC subclass, which tells a reader where the claim space is dense and where it is not.
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Filing trends and technology composition
The 559 records in scope span 2015 through the partial 2026 filing year, with classification data showing where claim density sits inside the hot strip mill rolling-schedule field.
Filing activity by year
Filings peaked in 2017 at 7 in this dataset; the most recent years are undercounted because publication typically lags filing by around 18 months, so 2026's figure of 0 is not a real drop-off.
Technology composition by IPC subclass
B21B (metal rolling) covers 89.4% of the 559 records in scope, far ahead of C21D heat treatment at 16.3% and B21C metal extrusion/drawing at 5.4% — a record can carry more than one class, so these shares add up past 100%.
Shares are the percentage of the 559 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
Go deeper on Hot Strip Mill Rolling Schedule with Eureka
This page is one run against one query. Ask Eureka your own question about hot strip mill rolling schedule and every answer comes back with the patent numbers behind it.
Try EurekaThe most-cited records in this field
US4261190A — Flatness Control in Hot Strip Mill
The flatness of metal strip being rolled in a hot strip mill is improved by applying higher than normal interstand tensions with maximum permissible tensions being based upon preestablished maximum allowable width reductions due to interstand tensions. The relationships between interstand tension and interstand plastic deformation are predetermined functions of strip material properties, strip temperature, and assumed tensile stress distribution across the strip width.Assigned to General Electric Company, filed 1981 — an early foundational claim on tension-based flatness control that later gauge-control filings in this dataset have had to design around.
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | US5634257A | Hot strip rolling plant and method directly combined with continuous casting | 89 |
| 2 | US4898012A | Roll bite gauge and profile measurement system for rolling mills | 82 |
| 3 | US4675974A | Method of continuous casting and rolling strip | 63 |
| 4 | US4274273A | Temperature control in hot strip mill | 60 |
| 5 | US5133205A | System and process for forming thin flat hot rolled steel strip | 48 |
| 6 | JP1987234679A | Butt welding method for plate and equipment therefor | 46 |
| 7 | US5150597A | Hot strip plant | 44 |
| 8 | US5636543A | Hot steel plate rolling mill system and rolling method | 40 |
| 9 | US4595358A | Re-radiating heat shield | 40 |
| 10 | US4630352A | Continuous rolling method and apparatus | 40 |
Citation counts are drawn from the searched corpus and favour older filings; read them as signals of influence on later patents, not as an index of current commercial relevance.
Each row carries its publication number; clicking a row searches Eureka by that number.
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Three patterns stand out once family counts, classification shares and citation data are read together: concentration, class dominance, and a cooling filing pace among the historic leaders.
Core claims sit with a handful of filers
With 225 of 559 records held by the top 5 assignees, most interstand-tension and rolling-force logic is already staked out. New entrants filing directly against this claim scope face dense prior art rather than open ground.
Metal rolling absorbs nearly the whole field
B21B covers 500 of the 559 records. Heat treatment (C21D, 16.3%) and metal extrusion/drawing (B21C, 5.4%) trail well behind, meaning most novelty pressure concentrates in a single classification.
Legacy leaders have gone quiet
Several of the largest historic filers show zero filings in the latest year. That does not void their existing claims, but it does mean the pace of new claim-staking at the top has slowed relative to the 2017 peak of 7 filings.
Old records still anchor the field
US5634257A, on combining continuous casting with hot strip rolling, leads with 89 citations. High citation counts here reflect age and foundational status more than current commercial weight.
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to hot strip mill rolling schedule, with the prior art for and against each one.
| Assignee | Co-assignee | Shared families |
|---|---|---|
| Nippon Steel Corporation | Nippon Steel Engineering & Machinery Design Co., Ltd. | 6 |
| POSCO | TMEIC (Toshiba Mitsubishi-Electric Industrial Systems Corporation) | 6 |
| Nippon Steel Corporation | Tessen Co., Ltd. | 4 |
| Toshiba Corporation | Tessen Co., Ltd. | 4 |
| Nippon Steel Corporation | Ishikawajima-Harima Heavy Industries Co., Ltd. (IHI) | 3 |
| JFE Steel Corporation | Ishikawajima-Harima Heavy Industries Co., Ltd. (IHI) | 3 |
| Nippon Steel Corporation | Hitachi, Ltd. | 2 |
| Nippon Steel Corporation | Toshiba Corporation | 2 |
Only 10 co-assignee pairs appear across the dataset, with the strongest pairs reaching 6 shared filings — cross-company collaboration is the exception, not the norm, in this field.
Who is filing, and where the gaps are
The ranked leaders hold a disproportionate share of records, but the classification data shows several branches where filing is thin enough to be worth a fresh look.
The top-ranked assignee
The leading assignee holds 77 of the 559 records in scope, well ahead of the field, reflecting a long filing history in rolling-force and gauge-control claims.
A concentrated top tier
The top 10 assignees combined hold 329 of 559 records. Below that tier the ranking thins into a long tail of single- or few-filing entrants across the remaining 85 ranked companies.
Filing mostly happens alone
Only 10 co-assignee pairs appear across the dataset, the strongest reaching 6 shared filings. Most records list a single assignee, suggesting internal R&D rather than joint development is the norm.
| Assignee | Recent year | YoY |
|---|---|---|
| Nippon Steel Corporation | 0 | — |
| Hitachi, Ltd. | 0 | — |
| Westinghouse Electric Corporation | 0 | — |
| Kawasaki Steel Corporation | 0 | — |
| TIPPINS MACHINERY | 0 | — |
| General Electric Company | 0 | — |
| Toshiba Corporation | 0 | — |
| Primetals Technologies Germany GmbH | 0 | — |
Where to take this analysis next
The figures here establish concentration and classification patterns; the next step is testing them against a specific claim or a specific competitor's filing history.
Check freedom-to-operate against the top assignees
With 40.3% of records held by the top 5 assignees, a targeted claim chart against those portfolios is the fastest way to confirm whether a proposed rolling-force or tension-control claim is genuinely open.
Run a claim comparison in EurekaExplore the under-claimed IPC branches
Classes like G02B, B65H and C22C sit under 3% of the 559-record base each. Reviewing the individual filings in those classes is the fastest way to confirm whether a first claim there is realistic.
Explore classification data in EurekaTrack momentum shifts among quiet legacy filers
Several top assignees show zero filings in the latest year. Watching for renewed activity or new entrants filing into their claim space is worth setting up as an ongoing alert.
Set up assignee tracking in EurekaFrequently asked questions
Filing in this field is concentrated at the top: the leading assignee alone accounts for 77 of the 559 records in scope, and the top 5 assignees combined hold 225 records, 40.3% of the total. The top 10 combined reach 329 records, 58.9% of the field. This pattern is typical of a mature industrial-equipment niche where a small group of steelmakers and mill builders have filed continuously for decades rather than a fragmented field with many small entrants.
Rolling force models predict the force needed at each stand based on material properties, temperature and reduction targets, while gauge control uses feedback from sensors to adjust roll gap or tension in real time to hit a target strip thickness. In this dataset both concepts sit mostly inside the B21B metal-rolling class (89.4% of 559 records), often in the same patent, because commercial mills need the predictive model to set an initial schedule and the feedback loop to correct it during the pass.
Publication of a filed patent application typically lags the filing date by roughly 18 months, so any year close to the data cut-off will always look artificially low. In this dataset the trend runs 2017 at 7 filings down to 2026 at 0, but the 2026 figure reflects the partial year and lag rather than a genuine stop in R&D activity. Readers should treat the last one to two years of any patent trend as understated rather than as evidence of a slowdown.
The under-claimed branches in this dataset are optical measurement (G02B, 2.0% of 559 records), web and sheet handling (B65H, 2.5%) and alloy-specific claims (C22C, 2.5%), all well below the dominant B21B rolling-mechanics class. These lower shares mean fewer prior filings to design around, particularly for claims that combine in-line sensing or alloy composition with existing pass-schedule control logic rather than restating core rolling-force claims already held by the top assignees.
Not necessarily. Citation counts inside a searched patent corpus tend to favour older records simply because they have had more years to accumulate citations — the most-cited record here, US5634257A on combining continuous casting with hot strip rolling, has 89 citations partly because it dates back further than newer filings. Citation count is best read as a signal of historical influence on later filings, not as a measure of which patents currently matter most for freedom-to-operate.
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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.