Within this 155-record scope, one assignee leads with 22 filings, well ahead of the fifth-ranked assignee at 8 and the tenth at 6. The top 5 assignees together hold 41.9% of all records, and the top 10 hold 64.5%, so while there is a clear leader, more than a third of the field is spread across 29 additional assignees with smaller portfolios. Anyone assessing freedom-to-operate should check the leader’s claims first, then the next four, since together they cover the largest single block of prior art.

Publications peaked at 27 in 2018 and had fallen to 4 by 2024, a 67% drop from the 12 filed in 2021 — the clearest complete-year comparison available in this dataset. That said, patent publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, so the apparent decline in 2025 and 2026 numbers is partly an artefact of records still working through the pipeline rather than confirmed reduced activity. A fairer read is that the field cooled substantially from its 2018 high, with the most recent trend understated rather than definitively falling further.

Coating composition claims under IPC class C09D appear in 51.0% of the 155 records, making formulation the dominant claim type. Aircraft-equipment integration claims (B64D) appear in only 30.3% of records, and coating-process claims (B05D) in 23.9%, indicating that most filers are protecting what the coating is made of rather than how it is fitted to the airframe. Materials for miscellaneous applications (C09K, 26.5%) and polymer additive/composition classes (C08K at 22.6%, C08L at 16.8%) round out the chemistry-heavy profile of this field.