Nitinol Surface Coating Patents: Top Companies & Trends 2026
A data-driven look at nitinol surface coating patents: who leads filings, how the technology mix breaks down across IPC classes, and where filing activity is heading through 2026.
Filing growth = 2021 (7 records) → 2024 (5); 2024 is the last year we treat as complete. Top-5 share = the 5 largest assignees ÷ all 243 records in scope (CR5), not the ranked leaders only.
What this landscape covers
This landscape tracks 243 published records at the intersection of nitinol (and shape memory alloys more broadly) and surface coating, treatment or modification, filtered to IPC classes covering coating and deposition (C23C), alloys (C22C) and surface treatment of non-ferrous metals (C23F). The scope spans 2015 through the 2026 data cut-off, capturing both the medical-device-driven coating work that dominates commercial nitinol applications and the smaller cluster of jewellery and decorative-alloy filings that use related surface treatments.
Because publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, the most recent one to two years in any trend line will always look thinner than they eventually turn out to be. Family-level counts, rather than raw document counts, are used throughout the ranking and trend sections to reduce distortion from continuation filings and multi-jurisdiction refiling of the same invention.
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Filing trends and technology composition
The two views below cover the same 243 records from different angles: one traces filing activity year over year, the other breaks the corpus down by IPC subclass to show which technical territory carries the most claims.
Filing trend, 2017-2026
Filing rose from a single record in 2017 to a peak of 9 in 2020, then eased to 7 by 2021 and 5 by 2024 — a -29% move over that three-year span. 2025 and 2026 figures are still incomplete because of publication lag and should not be read as a continued decline.
Publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, so 2025 onwards are still filling in. Growth rates on this page therefore end at 2024; running them to the last bar would understate the field.
IPC subclass composition
Coating and surface deposition (C23C) touches 61.7% of the 243 records, and alloy composition (C22C) touches 47.7% — the two together define the technical core. Sterilising and disinfecting (A61L, 20.6%) and implants (A61F, 15.6%) mark the medical-device cluster, while jewellery (A44C, 10.7%) and electroplating (C25D, 10.7%) form a smaller, adjacent decorative-and-finishing cluster. Because records can carry multiple IPC classes, these shares are each measured against the full 243-record total and will not sum to 100%.
Shares are the percentage of the 243 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
Go deeper on Nitinol Surface Coating Patent Landscape with Eureka
This page is one run against one query. Ask Eureka your own question about nitinol surface coating patent landscape and every answer comes back with the patent numbers behind it.
Try EurekaMost-cited records and a representative early filing
JP1991285066A — Surface treatment of shape memory alloy (ULVAC Japan, 1991)
The filing describes irradiating a shape memory alloy surface with high-speed ion beams to mix the surface layer with the beam's constituent elements, forming an adherent layer that resists peeling and cracking. It also covers irradiating a surface that has already been coated with a thin film, or irradiating while simultaneously vapor-depositing a metal, as alternative routes to the same adhesion problem.Filed in 1991, this predates the bulk of the corpus and sits outside the 2015-2026 scope window used for the trend and ranking figures.
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | US6527919B1 | Thin film stent | 143 |
| 2 | US8002822B2 | Radiopaque coating for biomedical devices | 111 |
| 3 | US20090297720A1 | Erosion and corrosion resistant coatings, methods and articles | 107 |
| 4 | US6043451A | Plasma spraying of nickel-titanium compound | 96 |
| 5 | US6569194B1 | Thermoelastic and superelastic Ni-Ti-W alloy | 80 |
| 6 | US6776795B2 | Thermoelastic and superelastic Ni-Ti-W alloy | 56 |
| 7 | US20070034818A1 | Prestrained thin-film shape memory actuator using polymeric substrates | 53 |
| 8 | US6447664B1 | Methods for coating metallic articles | 43 |
| 9 | WO2007136777A2 | Wear resistant coating | 40 |
| 10 | US20030191520A1 | Thermoelastic and superelastic Ni-Ti-W alloy | 39 |
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 the field, not of current commercial relevance.
Each row carries its publication number; clicking a row searches Eureka by that number.
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Three patterns stand out once the ranking, the IPC mix and the receiving-office split are read together.
The top of the field is concentrated, the rest is a long tail
The leading assignee alone holds 27 records, and the top five combined hold 25.1% of all 243 records in scope. Past the tenth-ranked assignee, at 4 records, the ranking thins out quickly into single- and double-digit filers — a pattern typical of a field anchored by a few device makers rather than owned by one dominant player.
Coating process claims outweigh pure alloy-composition claims
C23C coating and deposition claims appear on 61.7% of records against 47.7% for C22C alloy composition, suggesting that most competitive activity is in how a coating is applied and adheres to nitinol rather than in new bulk-alloy chemistries.
US, China and Japan dominate where filings are received
The United States leads receiving offices with 71 filings, followed by China at 56 and Japan at 53; Europe, WIPO/PCT and Canada each sit in the low teens. That spread points to a field where medical-device markets in the US and device manufacturing in China and Japan are the primary commercial battlegrounds.
Filing activity has eased from its 2020 peak, not collapsed
Annual filings peaked at 9 in 2020 and moved from 7 in 2021 to 5 by 2024, a -29% change over that span. Because 2025 and 2026 records are still being published, this reads as a plateau after a peak rather than confirmed decline.
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to nitinol surface coating patent landscape, with the prior art for and against each one.
Where to take this analysis
The dataset points to specific follow-up questions rather than a single conclusion — these are the ones worth running down next.
Map the coating-process white space
With C23C claims concentrated around a handful of assignees, identify which deposition or surface-modification methods inside that subclass remain lightly claimed rather than assuming the whole class is crowded.
Explore coating claim gapsTrack the medical-device and decorative clusters separately
A61L/A61F implant-related filings and A44C jewellery filings behave as two different competitive sets with different assignees; treating them as one market risks misreading who the real competitors are.
Compare the two clustersRevisit the 2025-2026 trend once publication catches up
The apparent plateau after 2020's peak is only confirmed through 2024; re-running the trend in a year will show whether 2025-2026 filings recover, hold, or continue easing.
Re-check the filing trendCommon questions about nitinol surface coating patents
The leading assignee in this dataset holds 27 of the 243 records in scope, with the top five assignees combined accounting for 25.1% of all records. Past the tenth-ranked assignee, at 4 records, the field spreads into a long tail of companies and institutions filing in smaller numbers. This pattern is typical of a device-driven field: a handful of established players anchor the top of the ranking while the rest file opportunistically around specific product lines.
C23C, covering coating and surface deposition, appears on 61.7% of the 243 records in scope and is the single largest class. C22C, covering alloy composition, follows at 47.7%, meaning most patents combine a coating process claim with an alloy composition claim rather than filing on either alone. Smaller but active clusters sit in A61L sterilising/disinfecting (20.6%) and A61F implants (15.6%), reflecting the medical-device weight of the corpus, alongside A44C jewellery (10.7%) and C25D electroplating (10.7%).
Filing rose from a single record in 2017 to a peak of 9 in 2020, then eased to 7 in 2021 and 5 by 2024 — a -29% change over that three-year span. Because patent publication typically lags filing by around 18 months, the 2025 and 2026 figures in this dataset are still incomplete and should not be read as confirmation of a continued decline. The honest read is a plateau after a 2020 peak, pending more recent data filling in.
The United States receives the most filings at 71, followed by China at 56 and Japan at 53. Europe (EPO), WIPO/PCT filings and Canada each sit in the low teens by comparison. This distribution lines up with where nitinol medical devices are manufactured and commercialised, rather than reflecting where the underlying research originates.
JP1991285066A, filed by ULVAC Japan in 1991, describes irradiating a shape memory alloy surface with high-speed ion beams to mix the surface layer and improve coating adhesion, including variants where the surface is already thin-film coated or where metal is vapor-deposited during irradiation. It predates the 2015-2026 scope window used for the ranking and trend figures on this page, but it establishes ion-beam surface mixing as an early technical route that later coating patents in this space build on or design around.
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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.