Melt Treatment of Aluminium Castings Patents: Leaders & Trends 2026
Melt Treatment of Aluminium Castings Patents
Concentrated but not locked up: the top 5 assignees hold 32.0% of all 665 records in scope, and the top 10 hold 44.8% — enough to signal an active core but well short of gatekeeping the whole field. Filings rose from 11 in 2017 to a peak of 51 in 2019, then eased to 46 in 2021 and 41 in 2024 — an 11% pullback over that three-year span. The 2025-2026 figures are undercounted because of publication lag and should not be read as the trend continuing downward.
- 1SOUTHWIRE CO LLC66
- 2POHANG IRON & STEEL CO LTD57
- 3JFE STEEL CORP36
- 4FOSECO INTERNATIONAL LTD31
- 5BRUNSWICK CORP23
See the full melt treatment of aluminium castings 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
Frequently asked questions
What counts as melt treatment of aluminium castings in this patent dataset?
It covers process and composition patents applied to molten aluminium before solidification, including grain refinement, eutectic modification, degassing and inclusion removal. The search combines chemistry terms such as strontium addition with process terms such as degassing rotor and reduced pressure test, so it captures both additive chemistry and physical processing equipment. It does not extend to solid-state heat treatment after casting, though related IPC classes like C21D do appear where a single record covers both stages.
Who are the leading patent filers in aluminium melt treatment?
The dataset ranks 100 assignees by record count, with the leader holding 66 records against 23 for the fifth-placed filer and 15 for the tenth. That leader-to-tail gap is wide, but the top 10 combined still account for only 44.8% of the 665 records in scope, leaving substantial filing activity spread across a long tail of smaller portfolios. This is not a top-50 or top-100 list in the conventional sense — it is the complete ranked set the dataset returns.
Is the patent filing trend for this technology growing or shrinking?
Filings rose from 11 in 2017 to a peak of 51 in 2019, then settled to 46 in 2021 and 41 in 2024 — an 11% decline over that three-year window, which counts as a plateau rather than a collapse. Figures for 2025 and 2026 look lower still, but that is expected: publication typically lags actual filing by around 18 months, so the most recent one to two years in any patent trend understate real activity. Judge momentum on 2024 and earlier.
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 Melt Treatment of Aluminium Castings 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.