Iron Ore Sintering Process Patents: Who Leads, Where the Gaps Are 2026
- 73.0% of all 74 records sit with just five assignees, and 95.9% sit with ten — a field concentrated at the top with a thin tail below it.
- Filings fell -33% from 6 in 2021 to 4 in 2024, the last year the dataset can treat as complete.
- India dominates the filing venue with 46 of the receiving-office filings, well ahead of Europe's 13 and every other jurisdiction in scope.
Filing growth compares 2021 (6 records) with 2024 (4) — 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 74 records in scope (CR5), not by the ranked leaders only.
What this landscape covers
This landscape covers 74 published records matched against iron ore sintering process terms — sinter strand, sinter mix, bed permeability, coke breeze consumption, flame front speed, sinter basicity and return fines balance — filed between 2015 and mid-2026. The scope is narrow by design: it isolates process-control and bed-mechanics claims rather than the broader iron-and-steel category, so the counts below describe a specific slice of sintering engineering rather than ironmaking as a whole. Patent families, not raw document counts, are the fairer comparison unit here because they neutralise continuation filings and multi-jurisdiction duplicates.
Filing activity peaked in 2020 at 8 records and has since pulled back, though publication lag means the final one to two years in any patent dataset are always undercounted relative to actual filing activity. The IPC composition points toward metal extraction and refining as the dominant classification, with furnace and furnace-detail classes forming a secondary cluster around thermal and mechanical process control.
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Filing trend and technology mix
Two views of the same 74-record dataset: how filing activity has moved year over year, and how those records classify across IPC subclasses.
Filing trend, 2015-2026
Activity climbed to a peak of 8 records in 2020, then eased to 6 in 2021 and 4 by 2024 — a -33% move over that span. 2025 and 2026 figures will keep rising as later-filed applications publish, so the recent-year dip should not be read as a slowdown yet.
IPC subclass composition
C22B (metal extraction and refining) covers 79.7% of the 74 records, by far the largest single classification. F27B and F27D (furnaces, kilns and furnace accessories) each cover 23.0%, and C21B (blast-furnace iron production) covers 21.6% — together they mark a secondary cluster around thermal and mechanical process equipment rather than chemistry. Because a record can carry multiple classes, these shares add up to well over 100% of the record total and should be read as coverage, not as a partition.
Shares are the percentage of the 74 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
Go deeper on Iron Ore Sintering Process with Eureka
This page is one run against one query. Ask Eureka your own question about iron ore sintering process and every answer comes back with the patent numbers behind it.
Try EurekaThe most-cited records in this dataset
US5382279A — Method and apparatus for combustion of steel plant wastes
A process for consuming oily sludge waste product in steel making operations includes spraying a waste slurry onto the moving porous bed of a sinter strand. A burner hood is spaced above a portion of the moving bed. The bed carries a sinter mix which is ignited in the ignition zone of the burner hood and the slurry is sprayed onto the ignited sinter mix immediately downstream of the ignition zone. A vacuum system draws the slurry through the ignited sinter mix ensuring substantially complete combustion of the slurry.Filed by ISG Technologies, Inc. and granted 1995-01-17 — one of the older records in scope, cited 4 times within this corpus.
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | WO1996001333A1 | Sintering an iron ore blend containing porous ores | 21 |
| 2 | WO1994014987A1 | Mineral processing | 14 |
| 3 | US5382279A | Method and apparatus for combustion of steel plant wastes | 4 |
| 4 | IN201931005339A | Method for producing iron ore sinter from high alumina iron ore fines | 2 |
| 5 | IN201931005187A | An unfired agglomerate for use in straight grate sintering machine and method thereof | 2 |
| 6 | EP1942201A1 | Ore sintering composition and ore sintering method | 2 |
| 7 | EP4102311A1 | Method and system for adaptive learning of models in manufacturing systems | 1 |
| 8 | IN202121026063A | Method and system for adaptive learning of models in manufacturing systems | 1 |
Citation counts favour older filings simply because they have had longer to accumulate citations inside this corpus — treat them as a signal of influence on the field, not of current commercial relevance.
Publication numbers are shown where the record carries one (8 of 8 rows); clicking a row searches Eureka by that number.
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Three readings of the dataset that matter for anyone deciding where to file or where to challenge.
The field is concentrated, not fragmented
Five assignees hold 54 of the 74 records in scope, and the top ten hold 71 — 95.9% of everything published. That leaves a thin tail: most of the remaining named entities appear once or twice, which is typical of a mature process niche rather than an actively contested frontier.
Filing activity has cooled from its 2020 peak
Activity peaked at 8 records in 2020 and declined to 4 by 2024, a -33% move from the 2021 level of 6. Because publication lags filing by around 18 months, 2025 and 2026 counts are still incomplete and should not be read as confirming a continued decline.
Filing venue is heavily India-weighted
India accounts for 46 of the receiving-office filings, more than three times Europe's 13 and well ahead of Australia, WIPO, the US and Canada combined. That skew reflects where the operational sintering base — and the assignees working on it — is concentrated.
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to iron ore sintering process, with the prior art for and against each one.
Who holds the claim space
The ranked leaders in this dataset span integrated steelmakers and a handful of specialist and individual filers. Momentum across the recent-year window is flat to negative for every one of the top assignees tracked, consistent with the dataset's broader post-2020 cooldown.
One assignee sets the pace
The leading assignee holds 27 of the 74 records in scope, well clear of fifth place at 6 and tenth place at 2. That gap is wide enough that any freedom-to-operate review in this space should start with the leader's claim scope before looking further down the ranking.
A short list, not a crowded field
The assignee ranking returned by the dataset covers 16 companies total — this is the entire list the data endpoint returns, not a filtered top-N. Beyond the top ten, filing counts drop to single digits, meaning most named entities are one-off or occasional filers rather than sustained programmes.
No leader is currently active in the most recent window
Every top assignee tracked for recent-year momentum shows zero filings in the latest year, including a -100% year-on-year move for the second-ranked filer. Given the 18-month publication lag, this likely reflects unpublished recent applications rather than a full stop in R&D.
| Assignee | Recent year | YoY |
|---|---|---|
| Tata Steel Ltd | 0 | — |
| Nippon Steel Corporation | 0 | -100% |
| Bethlehem Steel Corp | 0 | — |
| Tata Consultancy Services Ltd | 0 | — |
| JSW Steel Ltd | 0 | — |
| Steel Authority of India Ltd | 0 | — |
| BHP Iron Ore | 0 | — |
| Council of Scientific and Industrial Research | 0 | — |
Where to take this analysis
The dataset points to a concentrated field with specific under-claimed branches. The next steps depend on whether the goal is filing, freedom-to-operate, or monitoring.
Map the leader's full claim scope
With one assignee holding 27 of 74 records, a claim-by-claim review of that portfolio is the fastest way to see what is actually blocked versus merely occupied.
Explore assignee portfolios in EurekaTrack the white space branches
Bed permeability monitoring, flame front speed sensing and basicity real-time adjustment show thin filing density relative to the core sintering claims — worth a deeper prior-art pull before drafting.
Run a white space search in EurekaWatch for the 2025-2026 publication catch-up
Recent-year counts will keep rising as filings from the last 18 months publish; re-running this search in six months will sharpen the current trend read.
Set a monitoring alert in EurekaCommon questions about iron ore sintering patents
One assignee leads the ranked list with 27 of the 74 records in scope, well ahead of the fifth-place holder at 6 and tenth place at 2. The ranking covers 16 companies in total, and the top five combined account for 73.0% of all records, so the field is concentrated rather than evenly spread. Anyone assessing freedom to operate should start with that leader's granted claims before reviewing the smaller filers further down the list.
Filings peaked at 8 records in 2020 and fell to 4 by 2024, a -33% change from the 2021 level of 6. However, patent publication typically lags actual filing by around 18 months, so the 2025 and 2026 figures in any dataset are still incomplete and will rise as pending applications publish. The honest read is that the field cooled after 2020, not that it has stopped.
The dominant classification is C22B, metal extraction and refining, covering 79.7% of the 74 records in scope. Furnace and furnace-accessory classes (F27B and F27D) each cover 23.0%, and blast-furnace iron production (C21B) covers 21.6%, pointing to a secondary cluster around thermal and mechanical process equipment. Because records can carry multiple IPC classes, these percentages overlap rather than summing to a whole.
India is the leading receiving office with 46 filings, more than three times the 13 filed at the European Patent Office. Australia, the WIPO PCT route, the United States and Canada each account for single-digit counts, with the US at 3 and Canada at 2. This distribution tracks the operational base of sintering plants and the assignees actively filing in this niche.
US5382279A, assigned to ISG Technologies and granted in 1995, covers a method of spraying oily sludge waste onto the moving porous bed of a sinter strand and igniting it under a burner hood, with a vacuum system pulling the slurry through the ignited mix for combustion. It is cited 4 times within this corpus, a meaningful but not dominant citation count relative to the top two cited records. Its claims are specific to waste-slurry injection during sintering rather than to general bed-permeability or basicity control, so it constrains waste-co-processing designs more than core sinter-mix formulation work.
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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.