Floating Offshore Wind Patents: Leaders, Trends & White Space 2026
- Filing peaked in 2021 at 88 records and has since declined toward 6 in the most recent (partial) year — a maturing claim landscape rather than a growing one.
- F03D and B63B dominate the IPC mix at 400 and 363 records respectively, showing the field is claimed jointly as wind-turbine technology and as marine vessel/structure technology — filers need to clear both.
- Europe and the US lead receiving offices with 108 and 104 records, ahead of PCT filings at 60 — most applicants are still filing nationally first rather than going global immediately.
What this landscape covers
Floating offshore wind foundation patents cover the structures and station-keeping systems that let a wind turbine operate in water too deep for a fixed monopile or jacket foundation — floating hull and platform designs, mooring line configurations, and anchor systems. This dataset pulls 453 patent families filed between 2015 and mid-2026 that combine floating-wind terminology with foundation, mooring, anchor or station-keeping claim language, narrowed further by IPC classes covering wind motors, marine vessels and foundation engineering.
The claim space sits at the intersection of two established fields — wind turbine engineering and marine vessel/foundation engineering — rather than being a single clean technology class. That overlap is itself a filing strategy: a platform claim drafted only against F03D prior art can still collide with B63B hull and mooring precedent, and vice versa.
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Filing trend and technology composition
Two views of the same 453-family dataset: how filing activity has moved year over year, and which technology subclasses the claims actually sit in.
Filings rose sharply then rolled over
Annual filings climbed from 24 in 2017 to a peak of 88 in 2021, then declined through the 2022 midpoint of 31 down to 6 in the most recent year. Because publication typically lags filing by around 18 months, the last one to two years understate true filing activity — but the shape of the curve, a clear rise-then-fall rather than a plateau, is unlikely to be an artefact of that lag alone.
Claims cluster in wind motors and marine vessels
F03D (wind motors) and B63B (ships and marine vessels) account for 400 and 363 of the records respectively — most families sit in both, reflecting that a floating foundation claim is drafted against turbine-engineering prior art and marine-structure prior art simultaneously. E02D (foundations) appears in only 17 records, and G05D (control systems) in 9, suggesting station-keeping control logic and geotechnical foundation detail are comparatively lightly claimed relative to the platform structure itself.
Shares are the percentage of the 453 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 Offshore Wind Foundation with Eureka
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Try EurekaThe most-cited platform designs
Air-liquid dual control anti-rolling system for floating offshore wind turbines (Dalian University of Technology)
The filing describes an anti-rolling control system built from three closed TLCD (tuned liquid column damper) loop units embedded into a floating foundation structure, each combining a liquid tank, an air tube and a liquid tube. The loops operate independently of one another, giving redundancy and the ability to start or stop individual units, and are described as simple to install, detach and replace.Filed 2025-01-09 — illustrates a research-institution route into station-keeping (motion damping) claims rather than the platform hull itself.
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | WO2017157399A1 | A floating wind turbine and a method for the installation of such floating wind turbine | 73 |
| 2 | WO2013155521A1 | Floating wind turbine platform and method of assembling | 52 |
| 3 | US20160369780A1 | Floating wind turbine platform structure with optimized transfer of wave and wind loads | 51 |
| 4 | WO2001073292A1 | Floating offshore wind power installation | 48 |
| 5 | WO2006132539A1 | Floating wind turbine installation | 45 |
| 6 | US20190078556A1 | A floating wind turbine and a method for the installation of such floating wind turbine | 41 |
| 7 | WO2013083358A1 | A floating wind turbine plant | 40 |
| 8 | US20170190391A1 | Floating Wind Turbine with a Floating Foundation, and Method for Installation of Such a Wind Turbine | 36 |
| 9 | US9394035B2 | Floating wind turbine platform and method of assembling | 36 |
| 10 | US20200022341A1 | Combined structure of a fishing net cage and floating wind turbine foundation and construction method for same | 35 |
Citation counts reflect influence within the searched corpus and skew toward older filings that have had more years to accumulate citations — treat them as a signal of foundational status, not of current commercial relevance.
Each row carries its publication number; clicking a row searches Eureka by that number.
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Browse MCP servers →What the numbers say about the field
Three patterns stand out once filing volume, technology mix and citation concentration are read together.
Activity has rolled over from its 2021 peak
Filings rose from 24 in 2017 to a peak of 88 in 2021, then fell through 31 at the 2022 midpoint to 6 in the most recent partial year. Even allowing for an 18-month publication lag, the decline is steep enough to suggest the initial land-grab on core floating-platform designs is past its most active phase.
Most claims are drafted against two prior-art bodies at once
With 400 records in wind motors (F03D) and 363 in marine vessels (B63B) out of 453 total families, the majority of filings sit in both classes. A freedom-to-operate search that only clears one subclass leaves exposure in the other.
Early platform patents still anchor the prior art
The most-cited record, WO2017157399A1, carries 73 citations, with the next four most-cited filings ranging from 45 to 52. All are structural platform or installation-method patents from the 2001–2017 period, meaning the foundational design space was substantially staked out before the 2021 filing peak.
Europe and the US are close, PCT filing is comparatively light
Europe leads narrowly with 108 records against 104 for the United States, while WIPO/PCT filings sit at only 60 — well below either national office. China (34), Australia (25) and the UK (17) trail further behind, indicating most applicants still prioritise national filing over an early PCT route.
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to offshore floating wind offshore wind foundation, with the prior art for and against each one.
Assignee landscape and momentum
Filing activity is spread across energy majors, turbine OEMs and specialist mooring/anchor firms, with recent-year momentum flat across the tracked leaders — none show growth in the latest year, and one shows a full year-over-year drop.
Established energy and OEM filers have gone quiet recently
Assignees including Equinor and Siemens Gamesa Renewable Energy show zero filings in the latest tracked year, consistent with the broader filing decline from the 2021 peak rather than any single company pulling back.
Specialist platform designers show the steepest pullback
Principle Power records a 100% year-over-year drop to zero filings in the latest year, alongside SBM Offshore-linked and Nordic mooring specialists showing similar zero-filing latest years — a pattern across specialist firms, not just diversified energy companies.
Co-filing is rare and concentrated around one Nordic firm
Only three co-assignee pairs appear in the dataset, and all three centre on the same Nordic mooring/anchor specialist filing jointly with individual named inventors — suggesting most other assignees file solo rather than through joint ventures.
| Assignee | Recent year | YoY |
|---|---|---|
| Equinor Energy AS | 0 | — |
| Siemens Gamesa Renewable Energy | 0 | — |
| Principle Power, Inc. | 0 | -100% |
| Single Buoy Moorings, Inc. (SBM Offshore) | 0 | — |
| Nordisk Havdrift AS | 0 | — |
| CLOVERS AS | 0 | — |
| Aerodyn Consulting Singapore Pte Ltd | 0 | — |
| Havfram AS | 0 | — |
Where to take this analysis
The dataset points to a field with its foundational platform patents largely staked out and filing activity past its peak — the open questions now sit in the thinner branches.
Map freedom-to-operate against dual classification
Because most families sit in both F03D and B63B, a clearance search limited to one subclass will miss exposure in the other. Cross-checking both is the first practical step before committing to a platform design.
Run a freedom-to-operate search in Eureka →Watch the thin branches, not the crowded ones
Station-keeping control logic and geotechnical foundation detail carry far fewer filings than the platform structure itself, which is where new claim positions are still realistically available.
Explore white space with Eureka →Track assignee momentum before assuming a leader
With every tracked leading assignee at zero filings in the latest year, current ranking position does not tell you who is actively filing now. Momentum data needs to be checked separately from cumulative counts.
Monitor assignee activity in Eureka →Common questions on floating offshore wind foundation patents
The dataset's assignee ranking is led by a mix of energy majors, turbine OEMs and specialist mooring/platform designers rather than a single dominant filer. Filing activity across the tracked leading assignees has slowed sharply in the most recent year, with several showing zero new filings, so cumulative rank and current momentum tell different stories. Anyone assessing competitive position should check both the historical count and the recent-year trend before drawing conclusions.
Filings rose from 24 in 2017 to a peak of 88 in 2021, then fell to 6 in the most recent partial year, with 2022 sitting at a midpoint of 31. Part of the recent drop is a publication-lag artefact — patent applications typically publish around 18 months after filing, so the last one to two years in any dataset are understated. But the decline starts before the lag window and is steep enough to suggest the initial wave of foundational platform and mooring claims has largely been filed, shifting activity toward narrower follow-on improvements.
F03D covers wind motors and turbines, while B63B covers ships and marine vessels and structures. In this dataset, 400 of 453 families fall under F03D and 363 under B63B, meaning most floating foundation patents are classified under both — the platform is claimed simultaneously as turbine-supporting infrastructure and as a marine vessel/structure. A patent search or clearance exercise that only covers one of the two classes will miss relevant prior art in the other.
Relative to the dense platform-structure and mooring-line claim space, station-keeping control algorithms (G05D, only 9 records) and geotechnical foundation/anchor detail (E02D, 17 records) are comparatively under-claimed. Anti-rolling damping approaches, such as tuned liquid column damper systems, and shared-mooring arrangements for multi-turbine arrays also show thinner coverage than the core hull and single-turbine mooring designs. These branches are where a first claim is more likely to clear existing prior art.
The most-cited record in this dataset is WO2017157399A1, describing a floating wind turbine and its installation method, with 73 citations. It is followed by several platform-structure and installation patents dating from 2001 to 2017, with citation counts between 45 and 52. Because citation counts accumulate over time, these older structural patents are the ones most other filings have had to draft around — they represent the foundational prior art for the field rather than necessarily the most commercially advanced current designs.
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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.