Magnetocaloric Cooling Heat Pump Patents: Leaders & White Space 2026
- Filing has cooled since 2020. 29 filings that year is the peak so far, with the 2022 midpoint down to 3 — a flat-to-declining trend, though the last year or two is understated by publication lag.
- The alloy layer is thinner than the systems layer. 228 of 229 records sit in F25B (refrigeration/heat pumps), but only 29 touch C22C (alloys) — most claim activity is on cycle and system architecture, not on the magnetocaloric material itself.
- Co-assignment is rare and concentrated. Only 5 co-assignee pairs exist across the whole set, and the strongest single pairing accounts for 9 shared filings — most applicants file alone.
Filing growth compares 2021 (4 records) with 2024 (10) — 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 229 records in scope (CR5), not by the ranked leaders only.
What this landscape covers
Magnetocaloric cooling replaces a compressor and refrigerant gas with a solid-state magnetic material that heats and cools as an applied magnetic field is switched on and off. The active magnetic regenerator (AMR) cycle is the dominant architecture in this dataset, and the search scope centres on IPC class F25B21/00 (refrigeration using magnetocaloric effect), alongside material-composition class C09K5/14. Filing activity spans 2015 to 2026, drawing on 229 patent families published across six major receiving offices.
The dataset is dominated by systems and cycle claims rather than material-composition claims, which tells a filer where the crowded ground actually is. Receiving-office spread shows this is not a single-jurisdiction technology: the United States and Europe together account for the majority of filings, with Japan, China, WIPO and India each holding a smaller but active share.
Filing trend and technology composition
Two views of the same 229 families: how filing volume has moved year over year, and which IPC subclasses carry the claim density.
A peak in 2020, then a flattening
Filings rose to 29 in 2020 before easing back; the 2022 midpoint of 3 confirms a decline rather than a plateau. Because publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, the final one to two years in the trend will fill in further before they can be read as a true signal.
Systems claims dominate; materials claims are a minority
F25B (refrigeration and heat pumps) appears in nearly every record, and H01F (magnets, inductors, transformers) is the second-largest subclass, reflecting how central the field-source hardware is to these claims. C22C (alloys), C09K (materials) and B22F (powder metallurgy) together cover a much smaller slice — the magnetocaloric material itself is comparatively under-claimed relative to the systems built around it.
Shares are the percentage of the 229 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
Go deeper on Magnetocaloric Cooling Heat Pump with Eureka
This page is one run against one query. Ask Eureka your own question about magnetocaloric cooling heat pump and every answer comes back with the patent numbers behind it.
Try EurekaThe patents this field cites most
EP2796811A1 — Magnetocaloric heat pump device, heating or cooling system and magnetocaloric heat pump arrangement
The invention provides a magnetocaloric heat pump device, comprising a magnetocaloric bed; a magnetic field source, the magnetocaloric bed and the magnetic field source being arranged to move relative to each other so as to generate a magnetocaloric refrigeration cycle within the heat pump, wherein the magnetic field source includes both a permanent magnet and an electromagnet.Filed by Technical University of Denmark, published 2014-10-29 — this filing predates the dataset's search window start but anchors the hybrid permanent-magnet-plus-electromagnet field-source approach that recurs across later filings.
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | US6526759B2 | Rotating bed magnetic refrigeration apparatus | 175 |
| 2 | US6668560B2 | Rotating magnet magnetic refrigerator | 168 |
| 3 | US4107935A | High temperature refrigerator | 157 |
| 4 | US6588215B1 | Apparatus and methods for performing switching in magnetic refrigeration systems using inductively coupled th… | 135 |
| 5 | US6467274B2 | Apparatus and methods for cooling and liquefying a fluid using magnetic refrigeration | 118 |
| 6 | JP2003096547A | Magnetic refrigeration material and producing method thereof | 116 |
| 7 | US20070220901A1 | Magnetic refrigeration material and magnetic refrigeration device | 110 |
| 8 | US6595004B1 | Apparatus and methods for performing switching in magnetic refrigeration systems using thermoelectric switches | 107 |
| 9 | US20030051774A1 | Magnetic material | 105 |
| 10 | US6676772B2 | Magnetic material | 105 |
Citation counts favour older, foundational filings inside this searched corpus — read them as a signal of influence on later filers, not as a ranking of current commercial relevance.
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Three patterns stand out once the raw counts are read together: where claim density sits, how citation age skews the influence signal, and how thin the co-filing network is.
Systems architecture is the crowded layer
Almost every record in this corpus touches F25B, the refrigeration and heat-pump class, while only 29 touch the alloy class C22C. A new filer entering on cycle design or regenerator geometry is entering the densest part of the field; a filer entering on the magnetocaloric alloy composition itself has more open ground.
The most-cited patents are the oldest, not the newest
The five most-cited records in this corpus predate the 2015 search window and describe rotating-bed and rotating-magnet architectures. Their citation counts reflect years of accumulated influence, not that these architectures are still the most commercially active approach today.
Most applicants file alone
Only five co-assignee pairings appear across the whole dataset, and the strongest — a corporate research entity paired with a university regents body — accounts for just 9 shared filings. Joint filings are the exception here, not a common risk-sharing pattern.
Filing is concentrated in two offices
The United States and the European Patent Office together account for well over half of all receiving-office filings, with Japan, China, WIPO and India trailing at single-digit-to-low-double-digit shares. A freedom-to-operate check that skips either the US or EPO misses most of the enforceable claim density.
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to magnetocaloric cooling heat pump, with the prior art for and against each one.
| Assignee | Co-assignee | Shared families |
|---|---|---|
| General Engineering & Research, L.L.C. | The Regents of the University of California | 9 |
| University of Victoria Innovation and Development Corporation | BROOK THOMAS C | 2 |
| University of Victoria Innovation and Development Corporation | BARCLAY JOHN A | 2 |
| National Institute for Materials Science (NIMS) | National Institute of Technology (Japan) | 1 |
| National Institute for Materials Science (NIMS) | Kanazawa University | 1 |
The strongest co-assignee link pairs a corporate engineering/research entity with a university regents body across 9 shared filings — the only pairing in this dataset that looks like a sustained joint program rather than a one-off collaboration.
Who is active, and where momentum has gone quiet
Recent-year filing counts across the tracked assignees show almost no filer with sustained current-year activity — a sign that this field's leaders built their claim positions earlier and have not returned to file again recently.
The only assignee still filing in the most recent tracked year
Among the assignees tracked for recent-year momentum, only the Chinese Academy of Sciences' Technical Institute of Physics and Chemistry shows any filing in the latest year — a single record. Every other tracked assignee, including established corporate and government-lab names, shows zero.
Established names have gone quiet recently
Corporate and national-lab names that built significant early positions — including a US aerospace firm, two major Japanese electronics manufacturers and a materials-research institute — show no filings in the latest tracked year. That does not mean they have exited the field; it may mean recent filings have not yet published.
One pairing anchors the collaboration network
A corporate engineering and research entity paired with a university regents body accounts for the strongest co-assignee link in the dataset at 9 shared filings — more than four times the next-strongest pairs. This is the closest thing to a sustained joint filing program visible in the data.
| Assignee | Recent year | YoY |
|---|---|---|
| Technical Institute of Physics and Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences | 1 | — |
| Astronautics Corporation of America | 0 | — |
| Toshiba Corporation | 0 | — |
| Mitsubishi Electric Corporation | 0 | — |
| National Institute for Materials Science (NIMS) | 0 | — |
| General Engineering & Research, L.L.C. | 0 | — |
| The Regents of the University of California | 0 | — |
| Shin-Etsu Chemical Co., Ltd. | 0 | — |
Where to take this analysis
The counts and rankings on this page are a starting point for a freedom-to-operate check or a whitespace search, not a substitute for one.
Run a claim-level novelty check on the alloy layer
With only 29 of 229 families touching the alloy class C22C, a targeted search on magnetocaloric material composition claims — rather than system architecture — is likely to surface more open ground.
Explore in Eureka →Track the quiet legacy filers
Several assignees with strong early positions show zero recent-year filings. Confirming whether that is a genuine slowdown or a publication-lag gap changes how a competitive response should be timed.
Explore in Eureka →Common questions about this landscape
The core class is F25B21/00, which covers refrigeration systems using the magnetocaloric effect, and it appears in nearly all 229 families in this dataset. Supporting classes include H01F for the magnets and field-source hardware, C22C for the magnetocaloric alloys themselves, and C09K5/14 for refrigerant and working-material compositions. A thorough freedom-to-operate search on this technology needs to span all of these, not just the primary refrigeration class, because system, material and hardware claims are often filed separately.
The most-cited records in this corpus — including US6526759B2 and US6668560B2, both describing rotating-bed and rotating-magnet architectures — predate the current filing window and have accumulated citations over more than two decades. High citation counts here reflect long-standing influence on later filers rather than current commercial dominance. Recent-year filing data shows a different, thinner set of active assignees, so influence and current activity are not the same signal.
No — filings peaked at 29 in 2020 and had fallen to 3 by the 2022 midpoint, indicating a flat-to-declining trend rather than continued growth. Because patent publication typically lags filing by around 18 months, the most recent one or two years in any such trend will always look artificially low and should be read with that caveat. Even accounting for that lag, the decline from the 2020 peak looks like a genuine slowdown rather than a reporting artefact.
The clearest gap sits in magnetocaloric alloy composition and forming — only 29 of 229 families touch the C22C alloy class and just 9 touch B22F powder metallurgy, against near-universal coverage of the F25B systems class. Active magnetic regenerator bed geometry and heat-exchanger integration for AMR beds also look comparatively thin relative to the cycle and field-source claims that dominate the corpus. Any first-claim strategy in this field should start with a targeted novelty search in those narrower branches rather than the crowded systems layer.
EP2796811A1, filed by the Technical University of Denmark, claims a magnetocaloric heat pump device where the magnetocaloric bed and a magnetic field source move relative to each other to generate a refrigeration cycle, with the field source combining both a permanent magnet and an electromagnet. That hybrid field-source structure is the specific feature to check against — a design using only a permanent magnet or only an electromagnet, or a different relative-motion arrangement, sits outside this particular claim as described. It should be treated as one data point in a broader freedom-to-operate review, not the only blocking reference in the field.
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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.