Scrap Characterization and Charging Patents: Who Leads, Gaps 2026
Scrap Characterization and Charging Patents: Who Files, Who Leads
Concentrated at the top. the top 5 assignees account for 79.4% of all 34 records in scope, while the top 10 cover the field entirely. Annual filings ran at zero in 2017 and climbed unevenly to a peak of 7 in 2024, the most active year on record. With fewer than four complete years of data once the publication lag is accounted for, no growth rate can be stated responsibly from this trend alone.
- 1扎普特齐公司35.3%
- 2金斯顿工艺冶金公司17.6%
- 3杰富意钢铁株式会社11.8%
- 4索特拉合金公司8.8%
- 5西马克集团有限公司5.9%
See the full scrap characterization and charging 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 scrap characterization and charging?
The dataset returns a ranking of 10 assignees, with a single leader holding 12 of the 34 records in scope — roughly a third of the field. The top 5 assignees combined account for 79.4% of all records, and the top 10 account for 100%, so this is a fully mapped but small competitive set rather than an open field. Anyone entering this space should expect to negotiate around a handful of established portfolios rather than a large, fragmented crowd of filers.
Is scrap sorting or steelmaking process the bigger patent claim area?
Steelmaking process claims under IPC class C21C appear in 70.6% of the 34 records, making it the dominant claim category. Object-sorting claims under B07C appear in 20.6% of records, a smaller but still meaningful cluster that includes vision- and sensor-based sorting systems. Because a single patent can carry both classifications, these figures are not mutually exclusive, but the gap does indicate that process-side claims are more heavily staked than sorting-hardware claims.
How fast is patent filing growing in this area?
Filing activity peaked so far at 7 records in 2024, up from zero in 2017, but the run of complete years is too short — especially once the roughly 18-month publication lag is accounted for — to calculate a reliable growth rate. Readers should treat 2025 and 2026 counts as understated rather than as evidence of a slowdown. A clearer trend read will only be possible once more of the 2024-2026 filings have published.
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 Scrap Characterization and Charging 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.