Methane & Green Propellant Rocket Patents: Who Leads 2026
Methane and green propellant rocket engine patents: who is filing and where the gaps sit
Concentrated at the top. the top 5 of 9 ranked assignees account for 75.0% of all 16 records in scope, with the leader alone holding 4. Filings sat at zero as recently as 2017, rose to a peak of 5 records in 2022, and moved from 1 filing in 2021 to 2 in 2024 — a +100% rise over that three-year span. 2025 and 2026 figures are still incomplete because of publication lag and should not be read as a slowdown.
- 1AGILE SPACE IND INC25.0%
- 2MOMENTUS SPACE LLC18.8%
- 3佛蒙特大学12.5%
- 4SMITH RICHARD D12.5%
- 5印度空间研究机构6.3%
See the full methane and green propellant rocket engines 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
Common questions on this landscape
How many patents exist for methane and green propellant rocket engines?
This landscape counts 16 published records in scope, covering the intersection of methane or green monopropellant chemistry with engineering issues like coking, cryogenic ignition, propellant densification and catalyst bed durability. That is a narrow, applied search rather than a survey of rocket propulsion broadly, so the true count of adjacent filings outside this exact scope is larger. Because publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, the most recent years in this count are understated and will rise as later filings publish.
Who are the leading patent filers in methane and green propellant rocket engines?
Nine assignees make up the full ranked set for this search, together covering all 16 records in scope. The top-ranked filer holds 4 records, well ahead of the fifth-place filer’s single record, and the top five combined account for 75.0% of all records. Most of the remaining assignees, including several university and research-institute filers, hold only one or two records each, which is typical of a field still being explored by individual teams rather than dominated by established majors.
Is patent filing activity in this space growing or slowing?
Filing activity has grown over the medium term: the count moved from 1 filing in 2021 to 2 in 2024, a +100% increase, after a peak of 5 records in the single year 2022. The apparent drop after 2022 should not be read as a slowdown, because records from 2025 and 2026 are still publishing and will raise those years’ counts. 2024 is the most recent year that can be treated as a complete data point for trend comparisons.
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 Methane and Green Propellant Rocket Engines 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.