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Run your analysis now →https://www.patsnap.com/resources/blog/rd-blog/marine-electric-and-hybrid-propulsion-patent-landscape/ · Patsnap · data cut-off 2026-07-31 · downloaded from the live page
Patent Landscape · Ship Propulsion & EfficiencyMarine electric and hybrid propulsion patents: who holds the claim space and where it is still open
- Concentration is modest. the top 5 assignees hold 18.6% of the 901 records in scope and the top 10 hold 31.1% — a leader exists but the field is not locked up.
- Filing has cooled from its peak. 2022 was the peak year at 104 records, and 2021→2024 shows a -12% change, though 2025-2026 figures are still filling in as publication catches up to filing.
- The composition spans marine and aerospace/EV classes at once. B63H marine propulsion (22.4%) sits close to B64D aircraft equipment (21.2%) and B60L electric vehicle propulsion (20.3%), signalling heavy cross-domain filing rather than a marine-only niche.
901
Published Records
19%
Top-5 Share of All Records
-12%
Filing Growth 2021→2024
US
Leading Jurisdiction
Filing growth compares 2021 (69 records) with 2024 (61) — 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 901 records in scope (CR5), not by the ranked leaders only.
Published byPatsnap Research··7 min readSourced from Patsnap Eureka
Overview
What this landscape covers
This landscape tracks patent filings at the intersection of marine electric and hybrid propulsion architectures and the power-management problems that make them workable: battery sizing, peak shaving, converter cooling, redundancy requirements and fuel-saving controls. The search string combines drivetrain terms — marine electric propulsion, hybrid propulsion, shaft generator — with the operational constraints that decide whether a design survives class-society review and real duty cycles.
The 901 records in scope span 2015 through the current filing year, with receiving offices led by the United States, the European Patent Office and WIPO's PCT route, alongside meaningful filing in Germany, India and Austria. Because the same underlying invention often gets filed as several related family members, the assignee ranking below counts patent families rather than raw document counts, which is the fairer unit for judging who actually holds ground.
Filing activity and technology composition, 2015-2026
Source: Patsnap Eureka. Assignee ranking and totals. Derived from a Patsnap search on Marine Electric and Hybrid Propulsion covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-07-31. Counts reflect published records only and shift as new filings publish.Run this in Eureka MCP
The Data
Filing trends and technology composition
Two views of the same 901 records: how filing volume has moved year over year, and which IPC subclasses carry the claim density.
Filing trend, 2017-2026
Filings rose from 29 in 2017 to a peak of 104 in 2022, then eased to 61 by 2024 (a -12% change from 2021's 69). 2025 and 2026 figures are still low because publication typically lags filing by roughly 18 months — those bars will fill in as later filings publish, so they should not yet be read as a slowdown.
Technology composition by IPC subclass
B63H (marine propulsion & steering) leads at 22.4% of the 901 records, closely trailed by B64D (aircraft equipment, 21.2%) and B60L (electric vehicle propulsion, 20.3%). Because records can carry multiple IPC classes, these shares sum to well over 100% — the overlap itself is the finding: marine hybrid propulsion patents are frequently filed alongside aerospace and EV drivetrain classes, not in isolation.
Shares are the percentage of the 901 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 Marine Electric and Hybrid Propulsion covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-07-31. Counts reflect published records only and shift as new filings publish.
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Representative filing and most-cited prior art
Representative Record
Hybrid propulsion system for a vessel — US20120309242A1
KONGSBERG MARITIME AS
Hybrid propulsion system for a vessel including main engines connected to propulsion means via transmission devices and connection devices for connection and disconnection, where the system includes one or more electrical machines arranged to the transmission device(s) via a connection device, and one or more hybrid shaft generators arranged between the electrical machine and one or more switchboards for the vessel.Filed by Kongsberg Maritime AS, published 2012-12-06 — a foundational shaft-generator hybrid architecture still widely cited in this field.
Most-cited records in this landscape
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | US20030230443A1 | Advanced composite hybrid-electric vehicle | 407 |
| 2 | US20120209456A1 | Parallel Hybrid-Electric Propulsion Systems for Unmanned Aircraft | 276 |
| 3 | US6223846B1 | Vehicle operating method and system | 259 |
| 4 | US20120025032A1 | Electrical architecture for a rotary wing aircraft with a hybrid power plant | 192 |
| 5 | US20090156068A1 | Hybrid propulsion systems | 169 |
| 6 | US20070051292A1 | Unmanned ocean vehicle | 134 |
| 7 | US20160036308A1 | Variable torque motor/generator/transmission | 128 |
| 8 | US20120207620A1 | Hybrid vehicle drive system and method and idle reduction system and method | 127 |
| 9 | US20120289103A1 | Unmanned Underwater Vehicle | 125 |
| 10 | US20070126292A1 | Advanced hypersonic magnetic jet/electric turbine engine (AHMJET) | 106 |
Citation counts favour older records simply because they have had more time to accumulate citations inside this corpus — treat them as a signal of influence on subsequent filers, not as a measure of current commercial importance.
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 Marine Electric and Hybrid Propulsion covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-07-31. Counts reflect published records only and shift as new filings publish.Run this in Eureka MCP
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What the numbers mean for filing strategy
Three read-outs from the concentration, composition and momentum data that should shape where a new filing gets placed.
Concentration
18.6% of 901 records
top 5 assignees
A leader, not a lock-up
The top 5 assignees combined hold 18.6% of the 901 records in scope, and the top 10 hold 31.1%. The leading assignee sits well ahead of fifth place, but the gap between fifth and tenth place is narrow, which points to a long tail of single- and few-filing entrants rather than a closed field.
Ranking covers 100 assignees, counted in records.
Momentum
104 in 2022, 61 in 2024
peak vs. most recent complete year
Past the peak, not necessarily past the interest
Filing peaked at 104 records in 2022 and had eased to 61 by 2024, a -12% change from 2021's 69. Several of the most active named assignees show zero filings in the latest year, but with publication lagging filing by around 18 months, 2025-2026 data should be read as incomplete rather than as evidence of exit.
Growth figure covers 2021-2024 only.
Composition
22.4% B63H, 21.2% B64D
share of 901 records
Marine claims sit next to aerospace and EV claims
B63H marine propulsion, B64D aircraft equipment and B60L electric vehicle propulsion are all in the 20-22% range of the 901 records, with B60K, H02J and B63J close behind. That overlap means a marine hybrid filing is as likely to compete with aerospace hybrid-power prior art as with dedicated ship-propulsion prior art.
Shares sum above 100% because records carry multiple IPC classes.
Eureka AI Agent
Looking for what nobody has claimed yet?
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to marine electric and hybrid propulsion, with the prior art for and against each one.
Source: Patsnap Eureka. Co-assignee relationships and derived observations. Derived from a Patsnap search on Marine Electric and Hybrid Propulsion covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-07-31. Counts reflect published records only and shift as new filings publish.Run this in Eureka MCP
Players
Who is filing, and where the gaps sit
The ranked leaders span aerospace primes, marine-specific system houses and automotive-hybrid entrants, reflecting the cross-domain IPC overlap seen in the composition data.
Leader
53 records
top-ranked assignee
A single leader well ahead of the pack
The top-ranked assignee holds 53 records, more than double the fifth-place count of 26, marking a clear lead. The gap narrows quickly after that: fifth place sits at 26 and tenth place at 21, a difference of only 5 records.
From a ranking of 100 assignees.
Long tail
31.1% top 10
share of 901 records
Most of the field sits below the ranked leaders
Even combined, the top 10 assignees account for 31.1% of the 901 records in scope, leaving nearly seven in ten records held outside that group. That is room for newer entrants to establish position without displacing an incumbent directly.
Top 5 alone: 18.6% of 901 records.
Cross-filing
9 co-assignee pairs
shared filings
Collaboration is limited but concentrated
Only 9 co-assignee pairs appear in the dataset, and the strongest pairs cluster around a small number of organisations, suggesting joint filing is the exception rather than the norm in this field.
Strongest pair: 4 shared records.
Recent-year filing momentum by assignee
| Assignee | Recent year | YoY |
|---|---|---|
| Harman International Industries | 0 | — |
| RTX Corporation (Raytheon Technologies) | 0 | -100% |
| General Electric Company | 0 | — |
| Rolls-Royce Deutschland Ltd & Co KG | 0 | -100% |
| Qualcomm Incorporated | 0 | -100% |
| Bell Helicopter Textron Inc. | 0 | — |
| Piaggio & C. S.p.A. | 0 | — |
| Falcon Power | 0 | — |
Source: Patsnap Eureka. Assignee-level momentum. Derived from a Patsnap search on Marine Electric and Hybrid Propulsion covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-07-31. Counts reflect published records only and shift as new filings publish.Run this in Eureka MCP
What's Next
Where to take this analysis
The concentration and composition figures point to specific next steps depending on whether the goal is freedom-to-operate, portfolio building or competitive tracking.
Check freedom-to-operate against the leader's claims
With the top-ranked assignee holding 53 records against a field of 901, a freedom-to-operate review should start with that portfolio before broader searching.
Explore assignee portfolios in EurekaWatch the long tail for emerging entrants
Because the top 10 account for only 31.1% of records, new activity is more likely to surface among lower-ranked or unranked filers than among the established leaders.
Track new filings in EurekaTarget the under-claimed control-logic branches
Power-management and redundancy-verification claims sit behind the core propulsion classes in filing density, which is where a narrowly drafted first claim has the most room.
Draft around white space in EurekaSource: Patsnap Eureka. Forward-looking reading of the same dataset. Derived from a Patsnap search on Marine Electric and Hybrid Propulsion covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-07-31. Counts reflect published records only and shift as new filings publish.Run this in Eureka MCP
FAQ
Common questions about this landscape
The ranking covers 100 assignees counted by patent family, and the top-ranked filer holds 53 records out of 901 in scope, well ahead of the fifth-place holder at 26. However, the top 10 combined account for only 31.1% of all records, so most of the field sits outside the ranked leaders. This points to a market with one clear leader but a wide base of smaller filers, rather than a small group of firms controlling the space.
Filing peaked at 104 records in 2022 and had eased to 61 by 2024, a -12% change from 69 in 2021. That is the most reliable trend statement available because 2024 is the most recent year with largely complete publication data. Figures for 2025 and 2026 look lower, but that is expected: publication typically lags actual filing by around 18 months, so those years will continue to fill in and should not be read as a decline yet.
The IPC composition shows B63H (marine propulsion & steering) at 22.4% of the 901 records, closely followed by B64D (aircraft equipment) at 21.2% and B60L (electric vehicle propulsion) at 20.3%. Because a single record can carry multiple IPC classes, these figures overlap rather than partition the dataset. In practice this means marine hybrid propulsion filings frequently sit in the same claim space as aerospace hybrid-power and automotive EV drivetrain patents, so prior art searches in this field should not stop at marine-specific classes.
US20120309242A1, filed by Kongsberg Maritime AS and published 2012-12-06, claims a hybrid propulsion system for a vessel in which main engines connect to propulsion means through transmission and connection/disconnection devices, with one or more electrical machines and hybrid shaft generators arranged between those transmission devices and the vessel's switchboards. It is a foundational architecture patent for shaft-generator-based hybrid propulsion rather than a narrow control-method claim. Anyone designing a shaft-generator hybrid drivetrain with similar engine-to-switchboard electrical machine placement should review this record closely as part of freedom-to-operate work.
The composition data shows lighter claim density in specific control and support functions compared to the core propulsion classes — areas like converter cooling architecture, peak-shaving control logic tied to shaft generators, redundancy-requirement verification methods, and battery sizing for hybrid shaft-generator duty cycles. These sit adjacent to the dense B63H and B60L claim territory but are not saturated in the same way. A narrowly drafted claim in one of these operational sub-areas has more room to stand without colliding with the dominant propulsion-architecture patents.
Answers are grounded in the same dataset. Derived from a Patsnap search on Marine Electric and Hybrid Propulsion covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-07-31. 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.