Offshore Floating Wind Hull Design Patents: Leaders & White Space 2026
- Filing peaked in 2023 at 12 families and has not been exceeded since, suggesting the current wave of hull concepts is largely staked out rather than still accelerating.
- Two families dominate citation activity both describing a t-shaped pontoon semi-submersible, filed under WO2021219787A1 and continued as US20230160368A1.
- The United States leads receiving offices with 13 filings ahead of Europe's 10 and the UK's 5, pointing to where enforcement risk concentrates first.
Filing growth compares 2021 (7 records) with 2024 (2) — 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.
What this landscape covers
Offshore floating wind hull design sits at the intersection of naval architecture and wind turbine engineering: semi-submersible pontoons, spar hulls, and the mooring and assembly infrastructure that gets them offshore. This dataset tracks 37 patent families published between 2015 and mid-2026 that combine floating wind turbine claim language with hull-specific IPC classes covering ships and marine vessels (B63B) and wind motors (F03D). Publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, so the 2025-2026 count understates actual filing activity in those years.
The technology composition skews heavily toward B63B (35 records) and F03D (33 records), with only a single record touching hydraulic and waterway engineering (E02B) — confirming that hull form and structural claims, not seabed or waterway infrastructure, are where the drafting effort has gone.
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Filing trend and technology mix
The filing curve and the IPC split together show a field that grew quickly, peaked, and has since plateaued without a clear second wave of activity.
Filings rose from zero in 2017 to a peak of 12 in 2023
The midpoint year, 2022, sits at 5 filings — well below the 2023 peak — so growth was concentrated in a short window rather than building steadily across the decade. No year since 2023 has matched it, which is consistent with a technology whose core hull architectures are now largely claimed rather than still being defined.
B63B and F03D co-dominate; E02B is nearly absent
35 of 37 records sit in B63B (marine vessels) and 33 in F03D (wind motors), meaning most filings are drafted to cover both the hull and the turbine-support function in a single family. Only one record touches E02B, indicating that seabed and waterway-engineering aspects of floating wind are being filed elsewhere or not yet claimed in this classification combination.
Shares are the percentage of the 37 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
Go deeper on Offshore Floating Wind Hull Design with Eureka
This page is one run against one query. Ask Eureka your own question about offshore floating wind hull design and every answer comes back with the patent numbers behind it.
Try EurekaThe most-cited hull concepts
GB2639974A — Near-shore floating wind turbine assembly base and method
A modular assembly base combining a wind turbine assembly platform and a floating hull assembly platform, each built from rectangular-hull modules with retractable, large-footing legs, designed to stage floating wind turbine and hull components near-shore before tow-out.Filed by Wang Jin, published 2025-10-08.
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | WO2021219787A1 | Floating wind semi-submersible with t-shaped pontoon | 25 |
| 2 | US20200378357A1 | Floating wind turbine platform controlled to optimize power production and reduce loading | 20 |
| 3 | US20230160368A1 | Floating wind semi-submersible with t-shaped pontoon | 9 |
| 4 | KR1020240015186A | System and method for installation of floating offshore wind power generation structures | 8 |
| 5 | US20220316446A1 | Floating offshore wind turbine assembly unit | 8 |
| 6 | GB2613228A | Semi-submersible trimaran floating offshore wind vessel with turret mooring | 6 |
| 7 | WO2020242807A1 | Floating wind turbine platform controlled to optimize power production and reduce loading | 5 |
| 8 | US12000375B1 | Mobile modular platforms and method for near-shore assembly of floating offshore wind turbines | 3 |
| 9 | US11225945B2 | Floating wind turbine platform controlled to optimize power production and reduce loading | 3 |
| 10 | WO2024062257A1 | Semi-submersible trimaran floating offshore wind vessel with turret mooring | 2 |
Citation counts favour older records simply because they have had more time to be cited; treat this as a measure of influence on subsequent drafting, not of current commercial relevance.
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Browse MCP servers →What the numbers mean for filing strategy
Three patterns stand out once the raw counts are read together: where citation weight sits, where filings are being registered, and how flat recent activity has become.
One pontoon architecture anchors the field
WO2021219787A1 and its continuation US20230160368A1 both describe a t-shaped pontoon semi-submersible and together account for the two highest citation counts in the corpus. Any new semi-submersible pontoon claim is likely to be examined against this family first.
The US is the primary enforcement venue so far
United States filings lead every other receiving office, with Europe and the UK trailing. A freedom-to-operate check that stops at the EPO or UK register will miss the largest single bloc of filed claims.
Activity has plateaued after a short growth window
Filings rose from zero in 2017 to a peak of 12 in 2023 but have not exceeded that level in any subsequent year on record, even allowing for publication lag. That points to a field where the core hull forms are staked out and new entrants are more likely to be filing around existing claims than defining new ones.
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to offshore floating wind hull design, with the prior art for and against each one.
Who is filing, and where the gaps sit
No single co-filing relationship dominates the corpus and momentum has cooled across the named assignees, which together suggest a field of independent inventors and small teams rather than an established industrial consolidation.
Collaboration is minimal
The only recorded co-assignee pairing in the dataset is Wang Jin with Darren McQuillan, appearing once. There is no dense collaboration network to map here — most families are filed by a single assignee.
Named assignees show no recent-year filings
Every assignee tracked for recent-year momentum, including Wang Jin and the other listed entities, shows zero filings in the latest year. Read alongside the flat post-2023 trend, this suggests the current cohort of assignees has paused rather than that a new leader has emerged.
A fragmented field with one shared classification core
With 37 families and no single assignee dominating the ranking, the field reads as fragmented rather than concentrated. What families do share is classification: nearly all combine B63B hull claims with F03D turbine-support claims in the same filing.
| Assignee | Recent year | YoY |
|---|---|---|
| Yuanli Power Co., Ltd. | 0 | — |
| TRIVANE LTD | 0 | — |
| Baso Technology Co. | 0 | — |
| Esma Offshore Co. | 0 | — |
| WANG JIN | 0 | — |
| ROBERT LUDWIGSSON | 0 | — |
| HSG Sungdong Shipbuilding Co., Ltd. | 0 | — |
| MCQUILLAN DARREN | 0 | — |
Where to take this next
The dataset points to specific follow-up work rather than a single conclusion.
Run a freedom-to-operate check against the t-shaped pontoon family
WO2021219787A1 and US20230160368A1 carry the heaviest citation weight in this corpus. Any new semi-submersible pontoon design should be checked against both before drafting claims.
Explore prior art in EurekaWatch US filings first
With 13 US filings against 10 at the EPO and 5 in the UK, enforcement risk and competitive filing activity concentrate in the United States more than in any other single jurisdiction tracked here.
Track US filings in EurekaTest claims in the under-claimed branches
Modular assembly staging, spar ballast optimisation and hull-form load coupling show comparatively thin direct claim coverage. These are candidate areas for a first-mover filing.
Map white space in EurekaCommon questions about this landscape
The most-cited record in this dataset is WO2021219787A1, a semi-submersible design using a t-shaped pontoon, cited 25 times. Its continuation, US20230160368A1, covers the same t-shaped pontoon concept and is cited 9 times. Together they carry more citation weight than any other family tracked, which makes them the starting point for any prior-art search into semi-submersible hull geometry rather than a single dominant corporate assignee.
Filings rose from zero in 2017 to a peak of 12 families in 2023, but no year since has matched that peak, and the midpoint year of 2022 sat at only 5 filings. That pattern reads as a short, concentrated growth window followed by a plateau rather than sustained expansion. Because publication typically lags filing by around 18 months, the final one to two years of the dataset will understate true filing activity, but the plateau shows up even accounting for that lag.
The United States is the leading receiving office in this dataset with 13 filings, ahead of the European Patent Office at 10 and the United Kingdom at 5. A search limited to the EPO or UK registers alone would miss the largest single bloc of filed claims. WIPO PCT filings (3) and smaller national offices such as Australia and Sweden (2 each) round out the picture but are secondary in volume.
The bulk of filings combine B63B marine vessel claims with F03D wind turbine claims — 35 and 33 of the 37 records respectively — concentrated around semi-submersible pontoon and spar hull geometries. Hydraulic and waterway engineering aspects (E02B) appear in only one record, and modular assembly staging, spar ballast optimisation and hull-form load coupling with turbine control show comparatively thin direct coverage. Those under-claimed branches are where a first claim is more likely to clear prior art cleanly.
It reads as fragmented. Across 37 families there is only one recorded co-assignee pairing, Wang Jin with Darren McQuillan on a single family, and no assignee shows filings in the latest tracked year. That combination — many independent filers, minimal collaboration, and paused recent activity — suggests the field has not yet consolidated around a small group of dominant industrial players, leaving room for new entrants to establish position.
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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.