Cold Room Defrost Patents: Leader, Trends & White Space 2026
A data-led look at cold room defrost patents: who holds the most filings, how the filing trend has moved since 2017, and where the technology classes leave room to file.
Filing growth = 2021 (9 records) → 2024 (0); 2024 is the last year we treat as complete. Top-5 share = the 5 largest assignees ÷ all 65 records in scope (CR5), not the ranked leaders only.
What the cold room defrost patent record shows
Cold room defrost covers the mechanisms and control logic that clear frost from evaporator coils in refrigeration and cold-chain equipment without letting the stored product warm past its safe range. The scope here spans 65 records published between 2015 and the 2026 cut-off, drawn from claims and titles that tie defrost cycles to cold rooms, refrigeration, cold chain or temperature-controlled transport, and classified under F25B or F25D. That is a narrow, mechanically-defined field rather than a broad refrigeration category.
Filing concentrated hard around 2021, at a single dominant assignee, and almost entirely inside cooling-hardware classification codes. What follows separates the leader's position from the long tail, and flags the adjacent control and software classes that carry only a handful of records each.
Filing trend and technology composition
The two views below cover the same 65 records in scope: one tracks when they were filed, the other how they classify across IPC subclasses.
A sharp peak in 2021, then a drop to zero by 2024
Annual filings rose from 2 in 2017 to a peak of 9 in 2021, then fell to 0 by 2024 — a -100% move over that three-year span. 2025 and 2026 figures are still filling in under the roughly 18-month publication lag, so treat the most recent two years as incomplete rather than as confirmation the field has gone quiet.
Publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, so 2025 onwards are still filling in. Growth rates on this page therefore end at 2024; running them to the last bar would understate the field.
Cooling hardware dominates; control layers are thin
F25D (refrigerators & cooling) appears on 98.5% of the 65 records and F25B (refrigeration & heat pumps) on 29.2%, confirming this is fundamentally a hardware-classified field. Ice making (F25C) reaches 10.8%. Software and AI-adjacent classes — G05B, G06F, G06N — sit at 3.1% each, meaning fewer than three records apiece carry that classification alongside the mechanical ones.
Shares are the percentage of the 65 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
Go deeper on Refrigeration & Cold Chain: Cold Room Defrost Patent Landscape with Eureka
This page is one run against one query. Ask Eureka your own question about refrigeration & cold chain: cold room defrost patent landscape and every answer comes back with the patent numbers behind it.
Try EurekaThe most-cited prior art and a recent representative filing
EP4109015B1 — KÜHLSYSTEM (Know Ice S.L., 2024-02-21)
This filing sits among the more recent grants in scope and comes from Know Ice S.L., an assignee outside the top concentration of filers — illustrating that newer entrants are still securing grants even as aggregate filing volume in the dataset has fallen off since the 2021 peak.Claim scope and family status are rendered separately; the abstract above summarises positioning only.
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | US3845637A | Defrost cycle initiation system | 31 |
| 2 | US5673565A | Defrosting method and apparatus for freezer-refrigerator using GA-fuzzy theory | 22 |
| 3 | US2259803A | Refrigerating plant | 22 |
| 4 | US5666816A | Defrosting method and apparatus for refrigerator using GA-fuzzy theory | 17 |
| 5 | JP1992363569A | Refrigerating showcase and concentrated supervisory device therefor | 15 |
| 6 | EP2711654A1 | refrigerator | 7 |
| 7 | JP1989123184U | JP1989123184U | 7 |
| 8 | US2265634A | Refrigerating plant | 6 |
| 9 | KR100759047B1 | System for heat radiating and deiced water evaporating of machinery room of refrigerator and controll method … | 5 |
| 10 | KR1019970002214A | Defrostion controller apparatus and its method of refrigerator | 5 |
Citation counts reward older filings that have had more time to accumulate citations inside this corpus; read them as markers of influence on the field's foundational methods, not as a ranking 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 concentration and technology data mean for filing decisions
Three figures set the shape of this field: how tightly filings concentrate at the top, how sharply the trend has turned, and how unevenly the technology classes are claimed.
One leader, then a real second tier
The leading assignee alone accounts for 21 of the 65 records in scope. The top 5 combined reach 60.0% and the top 10 reach 75.4%, which means roughly a quarter of the field still sits with assignees outside the ranked leaders — filing here is dominated but not closed.
A peak that has already unwound
Filings rose to 9 in 2021 and fell to 0 by 2024, a -100% swing that is measured on complete-year data and does not depend on the still-filling 2025-2026 window. A collapse this size after a single peak year usually signals a design cycle that has run its course, not a permanently closed technology.
Control software is barely claimed
F25D and F25B between them sit on the large majority of records, but the classes that would cover algorithmic or AI-driven defrost control — G05B, G06F, G06N — each appear on only 3.1% of the 65 records. That is a thin layer sitting on top of a dense mechanical base.
Filing is split across three roughly equal blocs
South Korea and the United States each show 14 records, Europe (EPO) 13 and Japan 10, with India and Germany trailing at 4 and 3. No single receiving office dominates the way the leading assignee dominates the ranking, so office choice is a secondary signal compared with assignee concentration.
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to refrigeration & cold chain: cold room defrost patent landscape, with the prior art for and against each one.
Where to take this next
The dataset points to two practical follow-ups: checking freedom to operate against the leader's filings, and testing the thinly-claimed control-software branches for open claim space.
Map the leader's claim boundaries
With 21 of 65 records held by one assignee, any new defrost mechanism should be checked claim-by-claim against that portfolio before development spend goes further.
Explore the assignee's filings in EurekaProbe the control-software gap
G05B, G06F and G06N each sit at only 3.1% of records, which is a narrow base to build a freedom-to-operate case on and a narrow one to design around.
Run a white-space search in EurekaCommon questions about cold room defrost patents
One assignee leads the ranked field with 21 of the 65 records in scope, well ahead of the rest of the ranking. The top 5 assignees combined hold 60.0% of all records and the top 10 hold 75.4%, so while the leader is dominant, roughly a quarter of the field is spread across assignees outside the ranked leaders. Anyone assessing freedom to operate should start with the leader's claims before looking at the long tail.
No — filings peaked at 9 records in 2021 and fell to 0 by 2024, a -100% change over that span using complete-year data. That drop should not be read as the field being exhausted; a peak-then-drop pattern like this often reflects a design cycle settling rather than a technology closing off. Figures for 2025 and 2026 are still incomplete because publication typically lags filing by around 18 months.
The large majority of records, 98.5% of the 65 in scope, carry the F25D subclass for refrigerators and cooling equipment, with F25B (refrigeration and heat pumps) on 29.2% and F25C (ice making) on 10.8%. Software and AI-related classes — G05B, G06F and G06N — appear on only 3.1% of records each, meaning they show up on just a couple of filings apiece. This confirms the field is classified predominantly as mechanical hardware rather than as control software.
Receiving offices are fairly evenly split: South Korea and the United States each show 14 records, Europe (EPO) 13, Japan 10, India 4 and Germany 3. No single office dominates filing the way the leading assignee dominates the ranking, so geography is a weaker signal here than ownership concentration. A company assessing regional risk should weigh assignee position ahead of jurisdiction alone.
Yes, in the control and software layer. Algorithmic or AI-driven defrost control classes — G05B, G06F and G06N — each sit at only 3.1% of the 65 records, a thin overlay on a mechanically dense base where F25D alone touches 98.5% of records. That gap does not guarantee an easy grant, since prior art like GA-fuzzy defrost control already exists among the most-cited records, but the volume of filed art in the pure control-software layer is low relative to the mechanical core.
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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.