Oil Free & Air Bearing Compressor Patents: Top Filers & Trends 2026
Oil Free and Air Bearing Compressor Patents: Who Files, Who Leads
74.1% of all 81 records in scope sit with just five assignees — this is a concentrated field, not a fragmented one. Filings rose to a peak of 12 records in 2022 before easing to 4 in 2024, a -20% move from 2021's 5 records. Because publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, the 2025 and 2026 entries in the trend are not yet complete and should not be read as a fall-off in interest.
- 1CARRIER CORP18
- 2GARDNER DENVER DEUTLAND17
- 3GENERAL ELECTRIC CO13
- 4HITACHI LTD7
- 5RICHARD JULIUS GOZDAWA5
See the full oil free and air bearing compressors 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 about this landscape
Who holds the most patents in oil free and air bearing compressors?
The dataset’s leading assignee holds 18 of the 81 records in scope, well ahead of the fifth-ranked filer at 5 records. The top five assignees combined account for 74.1% of all records, and the top ten reach 88.9%, so filing activity is heavily concentrated rather than spread across many small filers. The full ranking covers 19 companies in total, which is the complete set the dataset returns for this search scope, not a curated top-50 or top-100 list.
Is the oil free compressor patent field still growing?
Filing peaked at 12 records in 2022 and had eased to 4 records by 2024, a -20% change over that three-year span. Numbers for 2025 and 2026 look lower still, but publication typically lags actual filing by around 18 months, so those most recent years are undercounted rather than genuinely quiet. The honest read is a field that cooled from a 2022 peak, not one in decline.
What technology areas dominate oil free compressor patents?
F04D, covering non-positive-displacement pumps, touches 54.3% of the 81 records and is the field’s centre of gravity, reflecting the prevalence of centrifugal and turbo compressor architectures. F25B (refrigeration and heat pumps) and F04B (positive-displacement pumps) follow at 22.2% and 14.8%. Bearing-specific claims under F16C sit at only 11.1%, which is lower than the mechanism’s importance to the technology would suggest, since claim shares can overlap across multiple classes on the same record.
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 Oil Free and Air Bearing Compressors 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.