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Run your analysis now →https://www.patsnap.com/resources/blog/rd-blog/low-gwp-refrigerants-low-gwp-refrigeration-patent-landscape-patent-landscape/ · Patsnap · data cut-off 2026-08-31 · downloaded from the live page
Patent Landscape · Thermal Systems & RefrigerationLow-GWP Refrigerant Patents: Who Leads and Where the Field Concentrates
A patent landscape review of low-GWP refrigerant and refrigeration filings covering 444 records, IPC composition across F25B, C09K and C08J, leading assignees and where filing concentration leaves white space.
444
Published Records
68%
Top-5 Share of All Records
-6%
Filing Growth 2021→2024
US
Leading Jurisdiction
Filing growth = 2021 (18 records) → 2024 (17); 2024 is the last year we treat as complete. Top-5 share = the 5 largest assignees ÷ all 444 records in scope (CR5), not the ranked leaders only.
Published byPatsnap Research··7 min readSourced from Patsnap Eureka
Field Overview
What the low-GWP refrigerant patent record shows
Low-global-warming-potential refrigerants sit at the intersection of chemistry and mechanical system design, and the patent record reflects that split cleanly. One branch claims the refrigerant compositions themselves — blends, azeotrope-like mixtures, additive packages — while the other claims the compressors, heat exchangers and control logic that make those refrigerants work inside a real refrigeration or air-conditioning circuit. Filing concentrates heavily at the top of the assignee ranking, with a small group of chemical and HVAC majors accounting for most of the 444 records this review covers. Publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, so the most recent filing years understate real activity and should be read as a floor, not a ceiling.
The receiving-office spread — concentrated in the United States, the European Patent Office and WIPO's PCT route, with meaningful India, Germany and Austrian filing — points to a technology being protected across the jurisdictions that regulate refrigerant transition directly, rather than filed opportunistically in a single home market.
Filing activity and technology composition, 2015–2026
Source: Patsnap Eureka. Assignee ranking and totals. Derived from a Patsnap search on Low-GWP Refrigerants: Low GWP Refrigeration Patent Landscape covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-08-31. Counts reflect published records only and shift as new filings publish.Run this in Eureka MCP
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The Numbers
Filing trend and technology composition
Two views of the same 444-record dataset: how filing activity has moved year over year, and how those records split across IPC subclasses. Because a single record can carry several IPC codes, the class shares below sum to well over 100% of the record total — that is expected and is not an error.
Filing activity peaked in 2018, then levelled
Annual filings rose to a peak of 89 records in 2018. The 2021-to-2024 window — the most recent span that publication lag allows us to treat as complete — moved from 18 to 17 records, a -6% change. That reads as a plateau in a mature filing base, not a retreat from the technology; 2025 and 2026 figures will keep filling in as publications catch up.
Publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, so 2025 onwards are still filling in. Growth rates on this page therefore end at 2024; running them to the last bar would understate the field.
The field splits between refrigerant chemistry and system hardware
F25B (refrigeration and heat pumps) covers 57.9% of the 444 records and C09K (materials for miscellaneous applications, which captures refrigerant compositions) covers 40.8% — the two largest classes, and evidence that both the fluid itself and the cycle hardware around it are actively claimed. Smaller but non-trivial shares in C08J (polymer processing, 11.0%), C10M (lubricants, 9.7%), F24F (air conditioning, 8.8%), F04D (pumps, 8.3%), F25D (refrigerators, 8.1%) and C11D (cleaning compositions, 6.1%) show the adjacent claim territory around compatible lubricants, seals and cleaning formulations that a refrigerant switch drags along with it.
Shares are the percentage of the 444 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
Source: Patsnap Eureka. Filing trend and technology composition. Derived from a Patsnap search on Low-GWP Refrigerants: Low GWP Refrigeration Patent Landscape covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-08-31. Counts reflect published records only and shift as new filings publish.
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The records other filings cite most
Representative Filing
Dehumidifier circuit claiming a flammable low-GWP refrigerant (GWP of 6 or less)
MITSUBISHI ELECTRIC CORPORATION
Mitsubishi Electric's US20180296973A1 claims a dehumidifier built around a refrigerant circuit — compressor, condenser, pressure-reducing device and evaporator — designed specifically to run a flammable refrigerant with a GWP value of 6 or less, paired with a blowing fan and water storage tank arrangement. The claim ties the low-GWP, flammable refrigerant choice directly to the mechanical layout needed to manage that flammability safely inside a domestic appliance housing.Filed 2018-10-18. Illustrates how appliance-level claims bundle a refrigerant GWP threshold with the hardware needed to handle its flammability risk.
Most-cited records in the low-GWP refrigerant field
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | WO2005103190A1 | Azeotrope-like compositions of tetrafluoropropene and trifluoroiodomethane | 233 |
| 2 | US20060022166A1 | Azeotrope-like compositions of tetrafluoropropene and pentafluoropropene | 218 |
| 3 | US20060043331A1 | Compositions comprising tetrafluoeopropene & carbon dioxide | 171 |
| 4 | US20060043330A1 | Azeotrope-like compositions of tetrafluoropropene and trifluoroiodomethane | 168 |
| 5 | WO2005108522A1 | Azeotrope-like compositions of tetrafluoropropene and hydrofluorocarbons | 144 |
| 6 | WO2005103192A1 | Azeotrope-like compositions of tetrafluoropropene and trifluoroiodomethane | 119 |
| 7 | WO2005103191A2 | Azeotrope-like trifluoroiodomethane compositions | 113 |
| 8 | WO2005108523A1 | Compositions comprising tetrafluoropropene and carbon dioxide | 108 |
| 9 | US20050247905A1 | Azeotrope-like compositions of tetrafluoropropene and hydrofluorocarbons | 102 |
| 10 | WO2005103188A1 | Azeotrope-like compositions of tetrafluoropropene and pentafluoropropene | 98 |
Citation counts inside this corpus favour older filings that had more years to accumulate citations; treat the ranking as a signal of influence on subsequent claim drafting, not as a marker of current commercial relevance.
Each row carries its publication number; clicking a row searches Eureka by that number.
Source: Patsnap Eureka. Citation counts and representative records. Derived from a Patsnap search on Low-GWP Refrigerants: Low GWP Refrigeration Patent Landscape covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-08-31. Counts reflect published records only and shift as new filings publish.Run this in Eureka MCP
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What the concentration and composition mean for filing strategy
The ranking and IPC data point to a field where the largest players have already staked out both the refrigerant-chemistry and system-hardware claim space, leaving the more interesting opportunities in the classes that sit below 10% of records.
Concentration
67.6%
of 444 records held by top 5
The leading tier is narrow and well established
Five companies account for 300 of the 444 records in scope, and the leader alone holds 92. A newcomer filing broad refrigerant-composition claims is filing directly into that density; the more defensible path is a narrow hardware or formulation claim that sits beside, not on top of, the incumbents' coverage.
Top 10 combined reach 83.1% of records.
Technology Split
57.9% vs 40.8%
F25B vs C09K record share
Hardware claims outnumber pure composition claims
F25B (refrigeration and heat pump systems) covers a larger share of records than C09K (refrigerant materials), suggesting that system-level integration — how a given low-GWP fluid is managed through a compressor and heat exchanger circuit — is where more claim activity sits than the underlying chemistry alone.
A record can sit in both classes at once.
Filing Trend
89 (2018)
peak-year filings
Activity has plateaued, not collapsed
Filings peaked in 2018 and the most recent complete comparison, 2021 to 2024, shows a -6% change — a mature, steady filing base rather than a growing or shrinking one. Read 2025 and 2026 figures as incomplete given typical 18-month publication lag.
2017 opened at 40 filings; 2026 is a partial year.
Adjacent Claims
6.1%–11.0%
share across C08J, C10M, F24F, F04D, F25D, C11D
Lubricant and cleaning-composition claims are lightly filed
Classes covering lubricants (C10M, 9.7%), cleaning compositions (C11D, 6.1%) and polymer processing (C08J, 11.0%) sit well below the two lead classes. These are the compatibility problems a refrigerant transition creates — seal materials, lubricant miscibility, cleaning residues — and they carry far less filing density than the refrigerant or the cycle hardware itself.
Each share is of the full 444-record set; classes overlap.
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Source: Patsnap Eureka. Co-assignee relationships and derived observations. Derived from a Patsnap search on Low-GWP Refrigerants: Low GWP Refrigeration Patent Landscape covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-08-31. Counts reflect published records only and shift as new filings publish.Run this in Eureka MCP
Next Steps
Where to take this analysis
The numbers above establish where filing concentrates and where it thins out. The next step is usually to test a specific claim idea against that map before committing drafting time.
Map a candidate claim against the leaders' coverage
Run a proposed refrigerant-composition or cycle-hardware claim against the filings held by the top five assignees to see exactly where it overlaps before filing.
Explore in EurekaCheck the lightly-filed adjacent classes
Lubricant compatibility, cleaning-composition and seal-material claims sit under 10% of records — worth a closer look before assuming that space is already closed.
Search white space in EurekaTrack the most-cited prior art directly
The five most-cited records anchor a large share of downstream claim language; understanding what they actually cover shapes how a new claim should be drafted around them.
Read the cited records in EurekaSource: Patsnap Eureka. Forward-looking reading of the same dataset. Derived from a Patsnap search on Low-GWP Refrigerants: Low GWP Refrigeration Patent Landscape covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-08-31. Counts reflect published records only and shift as new filings publish.Run this in Eureka MCP
FAQ
Questions practitioners ask about this field
The filings in this dataset generally define low-GWP by reference to a numeric global-warming-potential threshold attached to a specific refrigerant or blend, rather than by a fixed universal cutoff. For example, the representative Mitsubishi Electric filing (US20180296973A1) specifies a flammable refrigerant with a GWP of 6 or less inside a dehumidifier circuit. Because the definition is claim-specific, always check the GWP value and flammability class stated in the individual claim rather than assuming a single industry-wide threshold applies across all 444 records.
Filing is concentrated: the top five assignees together hold 67.6% of the 444 records in scope, and the top ten hold 83.1%. The single leading assignee alone accounts for 92 records, well ahead of the fifth-ranked entrant at 31. This is a field dominated by a handful of large chemical and HVAC manufacturers rather than a broad field of small filers, so competitive monitoring should focus first on that leading tier's continuation filings.
Filing peaked in 2018 at 89 records and has since settled into a steadier pattern; comparing 2021 to 2024 — the most recent span not distorted by publication lag — shows a modest -6% change. That is a plateau in a mature filing base, not evidence of declining interest, and figures for 2025 and 2026 will rise as publications catch up given the typical 18-month lag between filing and publication. Anyone tracking this space should treat the most recent one to two years of any trend chart as provisional.
Both, and in roughly comparable volume. F25B, covering refrigeration and heat-pump systems, appears in 57.9% of the 444 records, while C09K, covering refrigerant materials and compositions, appears in 40.8%. Smaller but real shares also sit in lubricants (C10M), air conditioning (F24F), pumps (F04D), refrigerators (F25D) and cleaning compositions (C11D), reflecting the compatibility issues — seals, lubricants, cleaning residues — that a refrigerant swap creates across an entire system.
The two dominant classes, F25B and C09K, are also where the leading assignees have concentrated their filings, making them the most crowded ground. The classes sitting between roughly 6% and 11% of records — lubricant compatibility (C10M), cleaning compositions (C11D), polymer processing (C08J) and pump-specific integration (F04D) — carry far lower filing density and are worth checking before assuming the space around a specific low-GWP refrigerant application is already closed.
Answers are grounded in the same dataset. Derived from a Patsnap search on Low-GWP Refrigerants: Low GWP Refrigeration Patent Landscape covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-08-31. Counts reflect published records only and shift as new filings publish.Run this in Eureka MCP
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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.