Metal Additive Manufacturing Patents: Who Leads, Where Gaps Are 2026
- 32.0% of all 1,730 records sit with the five leading assignees, and 43.1% with the top ten — concentrated but not closed.
- Filings peaked in 2020 at 306 then eased to 150 by 2024, a -14% move from 2021's 174 — read the tail years as still filling in, not falling.
- B33Y and B22F anchor the field at 51.3% and 34.6% of records respectively, while dentistry-linked A61C claims sit at just 6.6% — a narrower lane than the headline additive-manufacturing classes suggest.
Filing growth compares 2021 (174 records) with 2024 (150) — 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 1,730 records in scope (CR5), not by the ranked leaders only.
What the metal additive manufacturing patent record actually shows
Metal additive manufacturing patenting spans powder-bed fusion, directed energy deposition and the powder metallurgy that feeds both, plus the alloy and process-control claims that determine whether a printed part meets dimensional tolerance in production. The search underlying this page pairs those manufacturing routes against process controls — process temperature, tool geometry, material feed, dimensional tolerance, material phase and surface layer — so the 1,730 records in scope are weighted toward claims that make a printed metal part repeatable, not just claims that describe printing it once.
Filing has been active since before 2017 and the 2020 peak of 306 records marks the field's densest single year, with the most recent years understated because publication trails filing by roughly 18 months. The assignee base is concentrated at the top but not dominated by one player: five companies hold a third of all records, and the tenth-ranked assignee still files well below the leader, leaving a long tail of single- and few-filing entrants.
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Filing trends and technology composition
The trend line and the IPC breakdown below are drawn from the same 1,730-record corpus and use the denominators stated for each figure — class shares sum past 100% because a single record can carry several IPC subclasses.
A decade of filing, with a 2020 peak
Annual filings ran from 91 records in 2017 up to a peak of 306 in 2020, then to 174 in 2021 and 150 in 2024 — a -14% move across that three-year span. 2025 and 2026 show far fewer records, but that reflects publication lag rather than a genuine drop-off in filing.
Additive manufacturing and powder metallurgy dominate the classes
B33Y (additive manufacturing / 3D printing) touches 51.3% of records and B22F (powder metallurgy) 34.6%, confirming these as the field's core claim territory. Plastics shaping (B29C, 23.6%) and welding/brazing (B23K, 14.7%) show how much metal AM claiming overlaps adjacent shaping and joining art, while alloys (C22C, 13.4%) and dentistry (A61C, 6.6%) mark narrower, more specialised lanes.
Shares are the percentage of the 1,730 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
Go deeper on Metal Additive Manufacturing Patent Landscape with Eureka
This page is one run against one query. Ask Eureka your own question about metal additive manufacturing patent landscape and every answer comes back with the patent numbers behind it.
Try EurekaRepresentative and most-cited filings
Distortion mitigation in directed energy deposition (US20210276096A1, Norsk Titanium)
Provided are a mount system and systems and methods using the mount system for manufacturing objects, especially titanium and titanium alloy objects, by directed energy deposition. The methods include thermally pre-bending the substrate onto which the object is to be manufactured to form a pre-bent substrate, attaching the pre-bent substrate to a jig using the mount system as an underlying support, pre-heating the substrate, and forming the object on the pre-heated, pre-bent substrate using a directed energy deposition technique.Filed by Norsk Titanium, published 2021-09-09 — a directed energy deposition claim aimed squarely at the distortion problem in large titanium builds.
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | US20170007362A1 | Dental materials using thermoset polymers | 252 |
| 2 | US20200089826A1 | Integrated process-structure-property modeling frameworks and methods for design optimization and/or performa… | 240 |
| 3 | US20170120337A1 | Methods and Systems for Coherent Imaging and Feedback Control for Modification of Materials | 231 |
| 4 | US20170274585A1 | Method and Apparatus for Additive Manufacturing Using Filament Shaping | 151 |
| 5 | US20170129180A1 | Material processing methods and related apparatus | 144 |
| 6 | US20140034626A1 | Additive manufacturing | 134 |
| 7 | WO2019228798A1 | Endothermic reactions heated by resistance heating | 132 |
| 8 | US10492888B2 | Dental materials using thermoset polymers | 124 |
| 9 | WO2019228797A1 | Steam reforming heated by resistance heating | 123 |
| 10 | US10152661B2 | Structurally encoded component and method of manufacturing structurally encoded component | 114 |
Citation counts favour older filings that have had more time to accumulate references — treat the ranking as a signal of influence within this searched corpus, not a measure of current technical importance.
Each row carries its publication number; clicking a row searches Eureka by that number.
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These figures point to where claim space is dense, where it is thin, and where recent activity has actually gone quiet rather than merely lagged in publication.
The top of the field is concentrated but not closed
Five assignees hold about a third of all records and ten hold under half, which means the field has a genuine leadership tier but also a long tail of single- and few-filing entrants below it. A new entrant is not filing into a monopoly; they are filing alongside a crowded but not saturated leadership group.
Filing has eased from its 2020 peak, not collapsed
The three-year move from 174 filings in 2021 to 150 in 2024 is a -14% change, a cooling rather than a retreat. 2025-2026 figures look sharply lower but that is a publication-lag artefact, not evidence the field has stalled.
Core additive and powder-metallurgy claims dominate
Over half of records touch the additive-manufacturing subclass and over a third touch powder metallurgy, confirming these as the densest claim territory. Alloy composition (C22C) and dentistry-specific application (A61C) sit far lower, suggesting narrower but potentially less contested lanes for a focused filer.
Several leading filers have gone quiet in the latest year
Momentum data shows some of the most active historical assignees filing at, or near, zero in the most recent year, with year-on-year drops as steep as -100%. That could reflect a strategic pause, a shift to trade secret, or simply publication lag on very recent applications — it is worth checking directly before reading it as retreat.
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to metal additive manufacturing patent landscape, with the prior art for and against each one.
Who is filing, and where the activity has cooled
The leading assignees span equipment makers, aerospace primes, materials companies and even a dental-device manufacturer, reflecting how many industries have staked claims in metal additive manufacturing.
One assignee sits well clear of the field
The leading filer holds 183 records against 49 for the fifth-placed assignee and 32 for the tenth — a steep drop-off that marks a genuine leadership position rather than a crowded plateau.
A long tail sits behind the leadership tier
Beyond the top ten, the ranked list runs to 100 companies, most holding far fewer records than the leaders. That spread signals a technology still open to new entrants rather than one locked up by a handful of incumbents.
Co-filing is rare and mostly ties individuals to a corporate assignee
Only five co-assignee pairs appear in the corpus, and the strongest links pair a corporate filer with named inventors rather than two companies filing jointly. Cross-company collaboration on patenting is the exception here, not the norm.
| Assignee | Recent year | YoY |
|---|---|---|
| Align Technology, Inc. | 1 | -96% |
| Haldor Topsoe A/S | 0 | — |
| HRL Laboratories, LLC | 0 | -100% |
| Divergent Technologies, Inc. | 0 | -100% |
| Applied Materials, Inc. | 0 | — |
| Seurat Technologies, Inc. | 0 | -100% |
| Norsk Titanium AS | 0 | -100% |
| The Boeing Company | 0 | — |
Where to take this next
The figures above set the boundaries of the field; the next step is testing a specific claim or filing strategy against them.
Check freedom-to-operate against the leadership tier
With a third of records held by five assignees, any new filing in core additive or powder-metallurgy claim space should be checked against their specific claim scope before drafting.
Explore assignee claims in EurekaMap the under-claimed branches in detail
Surface-layer finishing, material-phase feedback and dental-specific process claims all show thinner filing density than the core classes — worth a focused search before assuming the space is open.
Run a white-space search in EurekaWatch for renewed filing once lag clears
The apparent slowdown after 2020 is partly a publication-lag effect; revisit the 2025-2026 figures once later filings finish publishing to see whether the -14% trend from 2021-2024 holds or reverses.
Track filing trends in EurekaFrequently asked questions
The corpus of 1,730 records is led by a single assignee with 183 records, well ahead of the fifth-ranked assignee at 49 and the tenth at 32. Together the top five hold 32.0% of all records and the top ten hold 43.1%, so leadership is real but not absolute. Below that tier the ranking runs to 100 companies, most with only a handful of filings, which means the field still has room for new entrants to build a position.
Filing peaked in 2020 at 306 records and eased to 150 by 2024, a -14% move from the 174 filed in 2021. That is a genuine cooling over that three-year window, but the very latest years in any dataset always look lower than they will eventually turn out to be, because publication trails filing by roughly 18 months. Treat 2024 as the most recent year with a reasonably complete count and be cautious reading too much into 2025-2026 figures.
Additive manufacturing itself (IPC class B33Y) appears in 51.3% of the 1,730 records and powder metallurgy (B22F) in 34.6%, making these the two densest claim areas. Plastics shaping and welding/brazing classes also appear frequently, reflecting how much metal AM claiming borders adjacent shaping and joining art. Because a single record can carry multiple IPC classes, these shares add up to more than 100% and should not be read as a strict market breakdown.
Relative to the dominant additive-manufacturing and powder-metallurgy classes, areas like surface-layer finishing tied to material feed control, alloy-specific dimensional tolerance claims, and dental-specific process claims show thinner filing density. That does not guarantee an easy filing — it means the claim space is less crowded, so a targeted prior-art search is the right next step before drafting. Co-assignee activity is also sparse across the corpus, suggesting collaborative filing strategies remain largely untested here.
US20210276096A1, assigned to Norsk Titanium, claims a specific mount-and-jig system that pre-bends and pre-heats a substrate before directed energy deposition to mitigate distortion in titanium builds. It does not block directed energy deposition generally; it blocks that particular pre-bending and mounting approach to distortion control. Companies working on distortion mitigation in large metal AM builds should check whether their approach depends on thermal pre-bending of the substrate specifically, since that is the mechanism this filing covers.
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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.