Plasma Heating and Current Drive Patents: Leaders & Trends 2026
Plasma Heating and Current Drive Patents: Who Holds the Ground
One assignee holds 210 of 652 records — far ahead of a fifth-place holder at 13, a concentration rare enough to change how a new entrant should think about freedom to operate. Filings peaked at 85 records in 2017 and have declined since; the drop from 36 in 2021 to 13 in 2024 (-64%) is the last span that can be treated as a complete trend, since 2025 and 2026 are still filling in behind an 18-month publication lag.
- 1TAE TECHNOLOGIES INC210
- 2ROBERT CHRYSLER BRENNAN TRUSTEE FOR SDI TECH TRUST30
- 3NKT PHOTONICS AS28
- 4TOKAMAK ENERGY19
- 5BLACKLIGHT POWER13
See the full plasma heating and current drive 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 are the leading patent holders in plasma heating and current drive technology?
One assignee holds 210 of the 652 records in this dataset, a lead far ahead of the rest of the ranked field, where the fifth-place holder has only 13. The top 5 assignees combined account for 46.0% of all 652 records, and the top 10 account for 54.0%. Below that, the ranking of 100 companies thins quickly into single- and low-digit filers, so most freedom-to-operate risk concentrates around a small number of names rather than being spread evenly.
Is patent filing activity in this field growing or shrinking?
Filings peaked in 2017 at 85 records and have trended down since, with the last complete span showing a -64% drop from 36 records in 2021 to 13 in 2024. Because publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, the 2025 and 2026 figures in any dataset are still incomplete and should not be read as proof the decline is continuing. Based on the data through 2024, filing activity has clearly pulled back from its mid-2010s peak.
Which patent classification covers the most plasma heating and current drive filings?
H05H, covering plasma and particle accelerators, appears in 38.0% of the 652 records, with G21B (fusion reactors) close behind at 36.5%. H01J (electron and discharge tubes) is a clear step down at 15.2%. Because records can carry multiple classifications, these figures overlap rather than sum to a whole, but together they show the corpus centred on core plasma-physics and confinement hardware rather than downstream applications.
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 Plasma Heating and Current Drive 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.