The dataset ranks 100 companies across 335 records, with the leading assignee holding 23 records and a step-down to 16 at fifth place and 11 at tenth. The top five combined hold 26.9% of all records in scope and the top ten hold 45.4%, so filing is concentrated at the top but not dominated by a single company. Named leaders in this space include established steelmaking and heavy-forging equipment groups such as Kobe Steel, SMS group and IHI, alongside research bodies and materials specialists. Beyond the ranked leaders there is a long tail of companies with only one or two filings each, typical of a mature industrial process field.

Most filings sit on core forging mechanics: 52.2% of the 335 records carry the B21J (forging & hammering) classification and 33.1% carry C22C (alloys), reflecting that claims tend to combine a forming process with a specific material composition. Secondary classes include heat treatment (C21D, 9.6%), metal casting (B22D, 9.0%) and metal rolling (B21B, 8.1%), each covering a modest share of records. Manipulator and robotics claims (B25J) appear on only 7.2% of records, a comparatively thin share given how central manipulator control is to running an open die press in practice. Because a single record can carry multiple IPC codes, these shares add up to more than 100% and should not be read as a pie chart.

Filing activity rose from single-digit counts in the late 2010s to a peak of 14 records in 2023, the highest year recorded in this dataset. The 2024-2026 figures appear lower, but that is expected: patent publication typically lags filing by around 18 months, so the most recent one to two years are always undercounted at the point of any data pull. With fewer than four complete years available once that lag is accounted for, no reliable growth rate can be stated from this trend, and the fair reading is that recent activity is at least holding steady rather than declining.

US20250360556A1, filed by SMS group and published 2025-11-27, describes a method that calculates a workpiece's geometry evolution and cross-sectional temperature in parallel during open die forging, derives how shape change is distributed along the workpiece length, and then controls that distribution in a targeted region manually or automatically. Anyone developing a similar closed-loop shape-control system that ties temperature modelling directly to geometry-evolution calculations during the forging pass should review this claim closely before finalising their own approach. It signals that process-monitoring and control claims, rather than purely mechanical press or die design, are an active area for new filings. Because it published only recently, its full prosecution history and final claim scope are still developing.

The clearest gaps sit in the classes that trail well behind the dominant B21J and C22C density: manipulator and robotics claims (B25J) cover only 7.2% of the 335 records, and process-monitoring concepts like void closure, die contact time and workpiece chilling appear mainly as search terms rather than as a densely claimed IPC subclass. That combination suggests real-time sensing and closed-loop control tied to specific process parameters — void-closure detection, chilling compensation, pass-schedule automation — is less crowded than the underlying forging and alloy claims themselves. A first claim in that space would typically combine a sensed or modelled process variable with an automated adjustment step, similar in structure to the representative SMS group filing in this dataset.