Roll Wear and Roll Cooling Patents: Who Leads, Where the Gaps Are 2026
- Concentrated at the top. the ranked leaders' top 5 account for 73.2% of all 71 records in scope, and the top 10 reach 90.1% — a small group holds most of the documented filing activity.
- Filing has cooled from its peak. 2017 was the peak year at 12 filings; the tracked growth window shows a fall from 2 filings in 2021 to 0 in 2024, though 2025-2026 figures are still filling in.
- Grinding overlaps rolling more than expected. B24B and B24D grinding-related classes each cover roughly a sixth of the 71 records, alongside the dominant B21B metal-rolling class at 94.4%.
Filing growth compares 2021 (2 records) with 2024 (0) — a three-year span. 2024 is the most recent year we treat as complete: publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, so 2025 onwards are still filling in and any growth rate that ends there would understate the field. Top-5 share is the combined record count of the five largest assignees divided by all 71 records in scope (CR5), not by the ranked leaders only.
What this landscape covers
Roll wear and roll cooling sits at the intersection of mill mechanics and consumable engineering: work roll wear, spalling and thermal crown on one side, and the grinding wheels, high-speed steel compositions and lubrication regimes used to manage them on the other. The search scope pairs wear and cooling terms with the specific mechanisms — thermal crown, banding defects, grinding interval, oxide film formation — that patent drafters use to distinguish one fix from another. That pairing keeps the corpus tight: 71 records rather than the thousands a broader rolling-mill query would return.
Because publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, the most recent one to two years in any trend understate real filing activity. The picture below should be read as a record of decisions made through roughly 2024, with 2025 and 2026 still arriving.
Filing trend and technology composition
The following two views cover the same 71 records from two angles: when the filings happened, and what technical classes they carry.
Filing trend, 2015-2026
Filings peaked in 2017 at 12 records. The tracked window from 2021 to 2024 shows a decline from 2 filings to 0, a -100% change; 2025 onward is not yet complete because of publication lag and should not be read as a continued drop.
IPC subclass composition
B21B (metal rolling) appears in 94.4% of the 71 records, confirming this is fundamentally a rolling-mill corpus. B24B and B24D — grinding and polishing, and grinding tools and abrasives — sit at 16.9% and 15.5% respectively, showing that roll-grinding consumables are a substantial secondary claim territory rather than a footnote. C22C alloys, G01N testing and C21D heat treatment each cover a small single-digit share, marking them as thin, specific niches rather than broad claim areas.
Shares are the percentage of the 71 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
Go deeper on Roll Wear and Roll Cooling with Eureka
This page is one run against one query. Ask Eureka your own question about roll wear and roll cooling and every answer comes back with the patent numbers behind it.
Try EurekaRepresentative and most-cited filings
US4864836A — Rolling method making use of work roll shift rolling mill
A tandem rolling mill is operated such that roll stands of an upstream stage of the mill adjacent to a strip inlet thereof are positioned relative to each other to effect a strip crown control or an edge drop control, while roll stands of a downstream stage of the mill adjacent to a strip outlet thereof are operated to axially shift the downstream stage work rolls cyclically to distribute roll wear and thermal crown in the axial direction thereof.Filed by Hitachi, granted 1989 — one of the earliest documents in scope establishing axial roll-shifting as a wear-distribution mechanism.
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | US8070556B2 | Grinding wheel for roll grinding and method of roll grinding | 102 |
| 2 | US6014881A | Rolling roll profile control equipment | 42 |
| 3 | US5651281A | Method and apparatus for rolling rolled strips | 33 |
| 4 | US20070099548A1 | Grinding wheel for roll grinding application and method of roll grinding thereof | 32 |
| 5 | US5943896A | Method of influencing the strip contour in the edge region of a rolled strip | 30 |
| 6 | EP0276743B1 | Rolling method making use of work roll shift rolling mill | 27 |
| 7 | US4864836A | Rolling method making use of work roll shift rolling mill | 27 |
| 8 | US20170259313A1 | Method and apparatus for controlling metal strip profile during rolling with direct measurement of process pa… | 25 |
| 9 | US6006574A | Apparatus and method for cooling the work rolls of a roll stand at an exit side thereof | 21 |
| 10 | EP0276743A1 | Rolling method making use of work roll shift rolling mill | 18 |
Citation counts favour older records that have had more time to accumulate citations within the searched corpus; treat them as a signal of influence, not current relevance.
Each row carries its publication number; clicking a row searches Eureka by that number.
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Three patterns stand out once the ranking, the trend and the class composition are read together.
A small group holds most of the claim space
The top 5 assignees account for 73.2% of all 71 records in scope, and the top 10 reach 90.1%. With 18 companies ranked in total, most of the remaining filers appear once or twice — a long tail sitting under a concentrated core.
Activity has receded from its 2017 peak
Filings peaked at 12 in 2017 and the tracked 2021-2024 window fell from 2 to 0, a -100% change. That decline predates the publication-lag window, so it reflects real filing behaviour through 2024 rather than incomplete recent data.
Rolling dominates, grinding is the real secondary front
B21B covers 94.4% of records, as expected for a rolling-mill corpus. The more informative split is between B24B (16.9%) and B24D (15.5%) — grinding process and grinding consumables — which shows roll-grinding wheel and abrasive design is claimed almost as often as the rolling mechanics themselves.
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to roll wear and roll cooling, with the prior art for and against each one.
Who is filing, and where the gaps sit
Eighteen companies make up the entire ranked list returned for this scope — not a top-50 or top-100 cut, the whole set. Filing concentration at the top leaves clearly defined open ground further down.
One filer sets the pace
The leading assignee holds 16 of the 71 records in scope, well ahead of the field. Their filings anchor the roll-shift and thermal-crown control lineage that runs through the representative patent.
A tight mid-tier before the drop-off
Fifth place sits at 5 records, and by tenth place the count is down to 2. The gap between the leader and the mid-tier is wide, but the mid-tier itself is fairly even — several firms hold comparable, modest positions.
Co-filing is rare and mostly bilateral
Only 4 co-assignee pairs appear across the corpus, the strongest linking a mill builder with a rolling-mill consultancy. Most filings in this field are solo efforts rather than joint development programmes.
| Assignee | Recent year | YoY |
|---|---|---|
| Novelis Inc. | 0 | — |
| Diamond Innovations Inc. | 0 | — |
| SMS Schloemann-Siemag AG | 0 | — |
| SMS Group GmbH | 0 | — |
| Hitachi, Ltd. | 0 | — |
| Danieli United, A Div of Danieli | 0 | — |
| International Rolling Mills Consultants | 0 | — |
| POSCO | 0 | — |
Where to take this analysis
The dataset points to a concentrated core and a thin periphery. The next steps depend on whether the goal is defensive clearance or finding open claim space.
Map the leader's full portfolio
With one assignee holding 16 of 71 records, a freedom-to-operate review should start there before looking at the mid-tier.
Explore assignee portfolios in EurekaSearch the grinding-consumables overlap
B24B and B24D coverage sits well below B21B, but together they mark a distinct secondary claim front worth its own search.
Run a class-level search in EurekaTrack the C22C and C21D niches
Alloy composition and heat treatment each cover only a couple of records — thin enough that a well-drafted claim could still find open ground.
Monitor niche classes in EurekaCommon questions on roll wear and roll cooling patents
The ranking returned for this scope covers 18 companies, and it is concentrated: the top 5 together account for 73.2% of all 71 records in scope, and the top 10 reach 90.1%. The single leading assignee holds 16 records, well ahead of the rest of the field. Beyond the top 10, filing activity thins out quickly into single or double-digit counts, so most competitive risk and most licensing opportunity sits with the handful of leaders rather than the long tail.
Filing peaked in 2017 at 12 records and has since declined; the tracked 2021-2024 window shows a fall from 2 filings to 0, a -100% change over that span. Because publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, the 2025-2026 figures in the underlying data are still incomplete and should not be read as evidence of a further drop. Based on the complete years through 2024, though, filing activity is well below its 2017 peak.
Nearly all records — 94.4% of the 71 in scope — carry the B21B metal-rolling classification, confirming this is fundamentally a rolling-mill technology set. A meaningful secondary cluster covers roll grinding: B24B grinding and polishing appears in 16.9% of records and B24D grinding tools and abrasives in 15.5%, meaning consumable and process design for roll maintenance is claimed almost as often as the rolling mechanics themselves. Alloy composition (C22C), material testing (G01N) and heat treatment (C21D) each appear in only one or two records, marking them as narrow, specific niches.
The clearest gaps sit in the branches with thin class coverage relative to the dominant rolling and grinding classes: alloy composition for high-speed steel rolls, in-process thermal crown sensing, banding defect detection and roll grinding interval optimisation all show only light coverage in this dataset. These are not unclaimed outright, but the filing density is low enough that a well-drafted claim naming a specific sensing method, alloy composition or interval-control scheme has room to establish new ground rather than fighting an already-dense area like core rolling mechanics.
US4864836A, assigned to Hitachi and granted in 1989, covers a tandem rolling mill where upstream stands control strip or edge crown while downstream stands axially shift work rolls cyclically to distribute wear and thermal crown along the roll's length. Anyone implementing cyclic axial roll-shifting specifically to spread wear and thermal crown in a tandem configuration with this upstream/downstream stage split should check this claim closely, since it is an early and heavily cited document in this corpus. Designs that use continuous rather than cyclic shifting, single-stage mills, or wear-distribution methods that do not rely on axial shifting sit outside its core claim language, though a full freedom-to-operate opinion needs the actual claim set, not just the abstract.
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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.
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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.