Investment Casting Patents for Industrial Parts
48.6% concentration. The top 5 of 81 ranked assignees account for 137 of 282 records in scope — filing is concentrated at the top with a long tail below. Filings rose to a peak of 10 records in 2018, then declined; the tracked three-year span from 2021 (6 records) to 2024 (2 records) shows a 67% drop. Because publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, 2025 and 2026 counts are still incomplete and should not be read as a continued fall.
- 1METAL CASTING TECHNOLOGY INC41
- 2HOWMET RESEARCH CORPORAION31
- 3HOWMET CORPORATION29
- 4NALCO CO25
- 5M ARGUESO & CO INC11
See the full investment casting for industrial parts analysis in Eureka
- The complete ranking, not just the top five
- Every IPC branch with its share of the corpus
- The most-cited records, and where claim space is still thin
Common questions about investment casting patents
Who are the leading patent holders in investment casting for industrial parts?
The dataset ranks 81 assignees, and filing is concentrated at the top: the five leading assignees together hold 137 of the 282 records in scope, or 48.6%. The single leading assignee alone holds 41 records, well ahead of the fifth-place holder at 11. Most of the remaining assignees in the ranking hold only a handful of records each, which is typical of a field with one or two dominant industrial players surrounded by foundries, materials suppliers and individual inventors filing narrowly.
Is investment casting patent activity growing or shrinking?
Filing peaked at 10 records in 2018 and has declined since; the tracked window shows a drop from 6 records in 2021 to 2 in 2024, a 67% fall. That said, publication typically lags filing by about 18 months, so the 2025 and 2026 counts in this dataset are still incomplete and should not be read as confirming a continued decline. The safest read is that documented activity slowed markedly after 2018 through the last complete year on record.
Which technical areas of investment casting see the most patent filings?
Foundry moulding (IPC class B22C) dominates, appearing in 85.5% of the 282 records in scope, far ahead of metal casting equipment (B22D, 17.4%) and polymer compositions used in pattern and shell materials (C08L, 14.9%). Ceramics and refractories (C04B, 9.6%) and turbine components (F01D, 8.5%) also appear, reflecting the aerospace and turbine-part applications that drive much of the demand for precision shell-mould casting. Because a single record can carry multiple IPC classes, these shares add up to more than 100% of the record total.
Disclaimer. This analysis is based on Patsnap Eureka data drawn from a limited snapshot of global patent records and is provided for general information and reference only. Patent data carries inherent limitations — recent filings are under-counted because of publication lag, counts may be on a record or family basis, classification and applicant-name data may contain errors or duplicates, and the underlying search query defines the scope shown — so the analysis may be incomplete or inaccurate and may not reflect the full technology landscape.
Nothing here is an exhaustive prior-art, novelty, freedom-to-operate or validity search, nor does it constitute legal, financial or professional advice, and it should not be relied upon as such. Verify independently and review with qualified patent and legal professionals before acting on it.
Method: Filing trend and technology composition. Derived from a Patsnap search on Investment Casting for Industrial Parts covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-07-31. Counts reflect published records only and shift as new filings publish. Every share divides by all records in scope. Data: Patsnap Eureka. See the full landscape report.