Nickel Base Corrosion Resistant Alloys Patents: Leaders & Trends 2026
- Filing has fallen sharply since its 2017 peak of 86 records — 2021's 46 filings dropped to 12 by 2024, a 74% decline, though 2025-26 figures are still filling in.
- The field is not consolidated — the top 5 assignees hold just 15.0% of all 1,770 records and the top 10 hold 25.9%, leaving a long tail of single- and few-filing entrants.
- Alloy composition claims dominate the art — C22C (Alloys) covers 49.9% of records, nearly four times the next largest class, E21B well-tubing applications at 14.0%.
Filing growth compares 2021 (46 records) with 2024 (12) — 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 1,770 records in scope (CR5), not by the ranked leaders only.
What this landscape covers
This landscape tracks patent activity in nickel base and nickel-chromium-molybdenum corrosion resistant alloys aimed at chemical plant environments — vessels, piping, and weld overlays exposed to hydrochloric acid service, crevice corrosion, sensitization, and stress corrosion cracking. The corpus spans 1,770 records published between 2015 and mid-2026, drawn from filings that combine alloy-composition language with corrosion-mechanism or fabrication terms such as weld overlay and intergranular corrosion.
Filing peaked in 2017 and has since declined through the most recent complete year, 2024. Because publication typically lags filing by around 18 months, the 2025-26 counts shown in the trend chart are still incomplete and should not be read as a further drop.
Filing trends and technology composition
Two views of the same 1,770-record corpus: filing activity over time, and where those records sit across IPC subclasses. Because a single record can carry several IPC codes, the composition shares add up to more than 100%.
A 2017 peak followed by sustained decline
Filings hit 86 in 2017, the high point of the window, then eased through the early 2020s. The 2021-to-2024 span alone shows a drop from 46 to 12 records, a 74% fall over three years — the clearest complete-year signal the data supports.
Alloy composition claims dominate; welding and pipe fittings follow
C22C (Alloys) appears in 49.9% of all records, far ahead of E21B (wells, 14.0%), B23K (welding/brazing, 13.1%) and F16L (pipe fittings, 10.9%). Heat treatment (C21D, 10.8%) and non-ferrous treatment (C22F, 8.8%) trail behind, with coating (C23C, 6.7%) and nuclear reactor applications (G21C, 5.7%) forming smaller but distinct clusters.
Shares are the percentage of the 1,770 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
Go deeper on Nickel Base Corrosion Resistant Alloys for Chemical Plants with Eureka
This page is one run against one query. Ask Eureka your own question about nickel base corrosion resistant alloys for chemical plants and every answer comes back with the patent numbers behind it.
Try EurekaRepresentative filing and most-cited prior art
US4487744A — Corrosion resistant austenitic alloy
An austenitic stainless corrosion resistant alloy and articles made therefrom having good resistance to pitting and crevice corrosion in oxidizing chloride-bearing media combined with resistance to general corrosion and to intergranular corrosion in oxidizing media, with a composition window spanning chromium, nickel, molybdenum, copper and controlled nitrogen, with optional niobium and titanium additions balanced against carbon content.Filed by CRS Holdings, Inc.; issued 1984-12-11. Its composition claims sit near the root of the corrosion-resistant austenitic alloy space this landscape covers.
View full record| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | US6309532B1 | Method and apparatus for capacitive deionization and electrochemical purification and regeneration of electro… | 368 |
| 2 | US5425858A | Method and apparatus for capacitive deionization, electrochemical purification, and regeneration of electrodes | 301 |
| 3 | US4366971A | Corrosion resistant tube assembly | 301 |
| 4 | US5954937A | Method and apparatus for capacitive deionization and electrochemical purification and regeneration of electro… | 268 |
| 5 | US6497290B1 | Method and apparatus using coiled-in-coiled tubing | 196 |
| 6 | US5638904A | Safeguarded method and apparatus for fluid communiction using coiled tubing, with application to drill stem t… | 145 |
| 7 | US6722706B2 | Thread form with multifacited flanks | 128 |
| 8 | US20110203791A1 | Coated sleeved oil and gas well production devices | 121 |
| 9 | US20110042069A1 | Coated sleeved oil and gas well production devices | 115 |
| 10 | US4010309A | Welding electrode | 115 |
Citation counts inside a searched corpus favor older records; treat them as a signal of influence on the field rather than of current commercial importance.
Each row carries its publication number; clicking a row searches Eureka by that number.
Put your own technology through the same analysis
Eureka on the web
When you want the answer in the next five minutes.
The agent works the prompt against patents and technical literature, citing every source.
Run your analysis now →MCP server & REST API
When it has to run inside your own pipeline.
Patent search, landscape analysis and assignee resolution as MCP tools. Drop them into any agent framework, or call REST directly.
Browse MCP servers →What the filing pattern signals
Reading composition share, filing trajectory, and citation weight together points to where claim space is dense, where it is thinning, and where influence sits with old art rather than recent filers.
Alloy composition is the crowded core
Nearly half of all 1,770 records touch C22C, the alloy-composition class. A new composition claim here is competing against the densest single layer of prior art in the dataset, which raises the bar for novel elemental ranges.
Momentum has cooled from its 2017 high
The three-year run from 46 filings in 2021 to 12 in 2024 is the clearest complete-year trend in the data. Read it as reduced fresh filing pressure in mature composition space, not as declining industrial relevance of the alloys themselves.
No single owner controls the field
The top 5 assignees hold 15.0% of all records and the top 10 hold 25.9% — concentrated enough to name leaders, but far short of a dominant-owner market. Most of the ranked 100 companies hold only a handful of filings each.
Influence sits with older filings
The most-cited records in this corpus date well back and describe corrosion-resistant tube assemblies and purification apparatus rather than recent compositions. High citation counts here reflect age and prior-art breadth, not current filing activity.
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to nickel base corrosion resistant alloys for chemical plants, with the prior art for and against each one.
Who is filing, and where activity has cooled
The assignee ranking spans industrial conglomerates, steelmakers, energy majors and specialty alloy houses. Recent-year momentum has slowed across nearly every named leader, consistent with the broader 2021-2024 decline.
A steelmaking and heavy-industry core
The leading assignees are dominated by steel producers and heavy-industrial groups with long-running alloy R&D programs, alongside energy majors filing on well-tubing and pipeline corrosion resistance.
A meaningful mid-tier before the tail begins
Filing counts step down gradually from the leader to tenth place, rather than falling off a cliff — a sign that several organizations maintain sustained, if smaller, alloy programs rather than one-off filings.
Recent-year filing has gone quiet at the top
Most tracked leading assignees show zero filings in the latest year, with only isolated single-filing activity. This tracks with the broader post-2021 decline rather than signaling exit from the field.
| Assignee | Recent year | YoY |
|---|---|---|
| JFE Steel Corporation | 1 | — |
| ExxonMobil Technology & Engineering Company | 0 | — |
| Sumitomo Metal Industries, Ltd. | 0 | — |
| Toshiba Corporation | 0 | — |
| Hitachi, Ltd. | 0 | — |
| Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Ltd. | 0 | — |
| Inco Alloys International | 0 | — |
| United Technologies Corporation | 0 | — |
Where to take this analysis
The figures here establish the shape of the field. Turning that into a filing or freedom-to-operate decision means going deeper on specific claims and specific competitors.
Map claims against your composition window
Run your target chromium-nickel-molybdenum ranges against the C22C-classified records directly, rather than relying on class-level shares alone.
Explore in Eureka →Track the leading assignees' active families
Check which of the leading assignees' families remain in force in your target jurisdictions, since filing counts alone do not show legal status.
Explore in Eureka →Watch the under-claimed branches
Weld overlay dilution control and sensitization-resistant heat treatment show thinner coverage than the alloy-composition core — worth a closer freedom-to-operate check before committing claim language.
Explore in Eureka →Common questions on this landscape
The ranking covers 100 assignees, and the leading company holds 58 of the 1,770 records in scope. The top 5 assignees together hold 15.0% of all records and the top 10 hold 25.9%, which means the field has recognizable leaders but is far from dominated by any single owner. Steelmakers, heavy-industrial conglomerates and energy majors make up most of the leading names, reflecting the dual use of these alloys in fabrication equipment and well or pipeline service.
Filing peaked in 2017 at 86 records and has declined since, with the clearest complete-year evidence showing a drop from 46 filings in 2021 to 12 in 2024, a 74% fall. Publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, so the lower counts shown for 2025 and 2026 are still filling in and should not be read as a further acceleration of the decline. Overall, the trend points to cooling fresh-filing activity in mature composition space rather than to renewed growth.
Alloy composition claims under IPC class C22C dominate, appearing in 49.9% of all 1,770 records. Welding and brazing (B23K, 13.1%), pipe fittings (F16L, 10.9%) and heat treatment of metals (C21D, 10.8%) follow at meaningfully lower shares, with nuclear reactor applications (G21C) the smallest tracked cluster at 5.7%. Because a record can carry multiple IPC codes, these shares add up to more than 100% and should be read as overlapping clusters, not exclusive categories.
US4487744A, assigned to CRS Holdings, Inc. and issued in 1984, claims an austenitic corrosion resistant alloy with a specific chromium-nickel-molybdenum-copper-nitrogen composition window, including optional niobium and titanium additions tied to carbon content. It is a foundational composition patent in the pitting- and crevice-corrosion-resistant austenitic space this landscape covers. Whether it blocks a new filing depends on whether the proposed composition falls inside its claimed elemental ranges — a granular claim-chart comparison is needed rather than relying on the abstract alone.
Relative to the dense C22C composition core, sub-areas such as weld overlay dilution control, sensitization-resistant heat-treatment schedules, and nuclear reactor cladding corrosion resistance show thinner coverage in this corpus. These branches sit adjacent to well-covered composition claims but address fabrication or service conditions that are less exhaustively claimed. That thinner coverage is a starting point for a freedom-to-operate check, not a guarantee of patentability on its own.
Research Nickel Base Corrosion Resistant Alloys for Chemical Plants in depth with Eureka
Go past this page: query the whole nickel base corrosion resistant alloys for chemical plants corpus yourself, in your own scope.
Every answer comes back with patent numbers you can open.
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.