Hydrogen & Cryogenic Seal Patents: Leaders, Trends & Gaps 2026
- 81.6% concentration at the top. The top five assignees combine for 31 of 38 records in scope — filing here is dominated by a small set of incumbents, not a fragmented field.
- Filing peaked in 2017 at 19 records and has fallen off sharply since, though the most recent years are understated by the usual 18-month publication lag.
- Fluorinated and siloxane chemistry dominate the cited core, with the most-cited record drawing 958 citations — a sign that low-temperature-stable perfluoroalkylene oxide chemistry set the baseline the rest of the field still cites.
Top-5 share is the combined record count of the five largest assignees divided by all 38 records in scope (CR5), not by the ranked leaders only.
What this landscape covers
Sealing for hydrogen and cryogenic service sits at the intersection of materials chemistry and mechanical design: a seal has to survive helium leak testing, resist material embrittlement under pressure cycling, and hold its properties near or below the glass transition of the polymer used. The 38 records in scope were pulled using search terms tied directly to these test conditions — permeation rate, spring energized seal, helium leak test — rather than broad sealing-industry language, so the corpus is narrow and technically specific rather than a general gasket-and-o-ring dataset.
The IPC spread across the record set points to a field built on polymer and fluorochemical claims more than pure mechanical seal geometry, with welding and brazing classes appearing as a secondary route for metal-to-metal joints in cryogenic assemblies.
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Filing trend and technology composition
Two views of the same 38-record corpus: the year-by-year filing count, and the IPC subclasses those records carry. Because a single record can carry more than one IPC code, the class shares below sum to more than 100% of the record total.
Filings rose to a 2017 peak, then declined
Filing activity climbed to 19 records in 2017, the peak year in the dataset, and has trailed off since. Treat the final one or two years as undercounted rather than as a genuine drop-off, since publication typically lags filing by around 18 months.
Polymer and fluorochemical classes dominate
A01N (biocides/agrochemicals) and B41M (printing & marking) are the two largest classes by record share, at 55.3% and 52.6% of the 38 records respectively — an indicator that much of the corpus overlaps with chemical formulation claims adjacent to sealing rather than pure mechanical seal design. C08G condensation polymers and B23K welding/brazing follow as smaller but still material shares.
Shares are the percentage of the 38 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
Go deeper on Sealing Solutions for Hydrogen and Cryogenic Service with Eureka
This page is one run against one query. Ask Eureka your own question about sealing solutions for hydrogen and cryogenic service and every answer comes back with the patent numbers behind it.
Try EurekaThe most-cited records in this corpus
Poly(perfluoroalkylene oxide) derivatives — US4094911A
Polyfunctional poly(perfluoroalkylene oxide) compounds, such as compounds of the formula A-CF2O(CF2CF2O)m(CF2O)nCF2-A' where A and A' are reactive radicals containing a polymerizable functional group, e.g., hydroxyl, are provided, such compounds being useful as monomers in the preparation of polymeric materials, e.g., polyurethanes, possessing unusual low temperature stability and resistance to solvents.Filed by Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Company (3M); one of three closely related perfluoroalkylene oxide filings that together anchor the most-cited cluster in this dataset.
View full record| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | US3810874A | Polymers prepared from poly(perfluoro-alkylene oxide) compounds | 958 |
| 2 | US4085137A | Poly(perfluoroalkylene oxide) derivatives | 227 |
| 3 | US4094911A | Poly(perfluoroalkylene oxide) derivatives | 199 |
| 4 | JP1988165378A | Glycidyl ether of fluorene-containing bisphenol | 39 |
| 5 | JP1983007452A | Hardenable siloxane composition | 39 |
| 6 | JP1987015212A | fluoroelastomer | 26 |
| 7 | JP1989213380A | Tacky agent composition | 14 |
| 8 | JP1985080754A | Local anesthetic sensor | 9 |
| 9 | US20170312852A1 | Laser Ablation Machine for Labeling Cryogenically-Frozen Vials | 7 |
| 10 | JP1988061018A | Polyester resin for toner | 7 |
Citation counts reward older filings inside a searched corpus; read them as a signal of influence on later work, not as a measure of current commercial relevance.
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Three findings stand out once the record set is broken down by assignee, year and IPC class — each has a direct bearing on where new claims are likely to survive examination.
A small group holds most of the ground
The top five assignees account for 31 of the 38 records in scope, and the top ten reach 94.7%. A single leader holds 12 records on its own. New entrants filing broad claims in the core chemistry are filing directly against an already-dense position.
Activity has cooled from its peak
Filing volume peaked in 2017 and has declined since, with 2026 showing zero filings so far — expected given the roughly 18-month gap between filing and publication, but still a genuine slowdown relative to the mid-2010s.
The cited core is fluorochemistry, not mechanical geometry
The three most-cited records all relate to poly(perfluoroalkylene oxide) chemistry prized for low-temperature stability — the citation weight sits in materials science, not in seal shape or spring-energized geometry.
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to sealing solutions for hydrogen and cryogenic service, with the prior art for and against each one.
Who is filing, and where the gaps sit
The ranked leaders in this dataset cover 12 companies; filing is heavily concentrated rather than fragmented, which changes both where a new entrant should file and where it should not.
One assignee holds the largest single block
The leading assignee accounts for 12 of the 38 records in scope, roughly a third of the entire corpus by itself, well ahead of the rest of the ranked field.
Almost no room outside the ranked leaders
The top ten assignees combine for 36 of 38 records, leaving only a handful of records held outside the ranked group — this is not a field with a large population of small independent filers.
One recurring filing partnership stands out
The strongest co-assignee pairing in the dataset appears together on 4 records, notably stronger than any other pairing, suggesting a sustained joint filing programme rather than a one-off collaboration.
| Assignee | Recent year | YoY |
|---|---|---|
| Merial Ltd | 0 | — |
| Boehringer Ingelheim Animal Health USA Inc | 0 | — |
| 3M Co | 0 | — |
| Kuraray Co Ltd | 0 | — |
| Boehringer Ingelheim Vetmedica GmbH | 0 | — |
| Dow Silicones Corp | 0 | — |
| Energy Conversion Devices Inc | 0 | — |
| E I du Pont de Nemours & Co | 0 | — |
Where to take this analysis
The landscape above sets the boundaries; the next step is usually record-level review against a specific claim set or design.
Check freedom to operate
Run a specific seal design or material composition against the top-cited cluster and the leading assignee's portfolio before committing to a claim strategy.
Explore in EurekaTrack the leader's next moves
The leading assignee holds a third of the corpus outright; monitoring its filing activity is a reasonable proxy for where the field's core claim space will tighten next.
Set up monitoring in EurekaCommon questions on this landscape
Filing in this dataset is concentrated at the top: the leading assignee holds 12 of the 38 records in scope, and the top five assignees together account for 81.6% of all records. The top ten combine for 94.7%, leaving very little activity outside a small, ranked group of 12 companies. This means a new entrant is filing directly against a dense existing position held by a handful of firms rather than into a fragmented field.
The dataset shows 19 filings in 2017, the highest single year on record, followed by a steady decline through to 2026. Part of that apparent drop is real, but part of it is an artefact of publication lag: patent publication typically trails filing by around 18 months, so the most recent one to two years in any trend understate actual filing activity. Treat the 2024-2026 figures as a floor rather than the true current pace.
The three most-cited records in this corpus all relate to poly(perfluoroalkylene oxide) compounds, materials prized for low-temperature stability and solvent resistance — properties directly relevant to cryogenic sealing. The top-cited record alone has drawn 958 citations. This tells you the field's technical foundation is fluorochemical materials science rather than mechanical seal geometry, even though the search terms used to build this dataset targeted mechanical test conditions like helium leak testing and pressure cycling.
Based on IPC class shares across the 38 records, sub-areas like vinyl/addition-polymer seal compounds (5.3% of records) and welding/brazing-based cryogenic metal joints (18.4%) carry noticeably lighter representation than the dominant polymer and biocide-adjacent classes. That does not guarantee an area is technically easy, but it does indicate fewer existing claims to design around. A first claim in these areas would need to tie a specific material or joint configuration to a stated cryogenic or hydrogen-service performance test to distinguish itself from the denser core.
Not necessarily. Citation counts inside a searched corpus like this one naturally favour older records, because they have had more time to accumulate references from later filings. The most-cited patents here date to the late 1970s and reflect foundational fluorochemical materials work, not necessarily the technology a company would license or design around today. Citation weight is best read as a signal of historical influence on the field's development, not as a ranking of present-day commercial relevance.
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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.
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.