Shape-Memory Alloy Patents: Who Leads, Where the Gaps Are 2026
- Filing has cooled since its 2018 peak. 11 families that year against just 2 so far in the most recent (partial) year — this is a mature, not a growing, claim space.
- Medical devices dominate the application layer. A61F implant claims (124 records) and A61L sterilising claims (81) sit on top of the core C22F/C22C metallurgy, meaning most value is captured downstream of the base alloy treatment.
- The most-cited art is two to three decades old. The top-cited record (271 citations) dates to the 1990s — current filers are working in the shadow of foundational patents rather than displacing them.
What this landscape covers
This landscape tracks patent families claiming mechanical property improvements in shape-memory alloys — principally nickel-titanium (nitinol) systems — under superelasticity, functional fatigue, recoverable strain and mechanical property enhancement search terms. The core IPC footprint is C22F (non-ferrous metal treatment) and C22C (alloys), with a large secondary cluster in medical device classifications (A61F, A61L, A61B, A61C) showing how heavily this materials science feeds implantable and interventional devices.
The dataset spans 2015 through mid-2026 and totals 368 patent families, used here as the counting unit so that continuations and multi-jurisdiction filings on the same invention are not double-counted.
Filing trend and technology composition
Annual filing counts and the IPC subclass breakdown for the 368 families in this landscape. Because publication typically lags filing by around 18 months, the most recent year is understated and should be read as a floor, not a ceiling.
A peak in 2018, then a flattening
Filings rose from 5 in 2017 to a peak of 11 in 2018, sat at 4 by the 2022 midpoint, and have not recovered — the profile of a technology whose core mechanical-property claims were staked out early rather than one still being actively built.
Metallurgy first, medical devices second
C22F (321 records) and C22C (209) confirm this is fundamentally an alloy-treatment landscape; the drop to A61F (124) and A61L (81) shows a large share of filers translate base-alloy work directly into implant and sterilisation claims rather than staying at the materials-science layer.
Shares are the percentage of the 368 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
Go deeper on Shape-Memory Alloy Mechanical Properties with Eureka
This page is one run against one query. Ask Eureka your own question about shape-memory alloy mechanical properties and every answer comes back with the patent numbers behind it.
Try EurekaKey patents shaping the claim space
Method of making shape memory alloy articles with improved fatigue performance
A method of making articles made of shape memory alloys having improved fatigue performance by pre-straining the articles, or desired portions of them, in a controlled manner so that the resultant articles exhibit improved fatigue performance. The articles are preferably implantable medical devices, most particularly nitinol devices that are superelastic at normal body temperature. The pre-straining method introduces controlled non-recoverable strain into the material.Filed by W. L. Gore & Associates, published 2012 — sits squarely in the pre-straining and functional-fatigue branch this landscape tracks.
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | US5964770A | High strength medical devices of shape memory alloy | 271 |
| 2 | US6533905B2 | Method for sputtering tini shape-memory alloys | 242 |
| 3 | US6602272B2 | Devices configured from heat shaped, strain hardened nickel-titanium | 225 |
| 4 | US5843244A | Shape memory alloy treatment | 208 |
| 5 | US5092941A | Method for imparting shapes to shape memory alloy wires | 185 |
| 6 | US20010039449A1 | Thin-film shape memory alloy device and method | 183 |
| 7 | US6375458B1 | Medical instruments and devices and parts thereof using shape memory alloys | 175 |
| 8 | US6797083B2 | Method of training nitinol wire | 96 |
| 9 | US20020052627A1 | Devices configured from heat shaped, strain hardened nickel-titanium | 83 |
| 10 | US6569194B1 | Thermoelastic and superelastic Ni-Ti-W alloy | 80 |
Citation counts inside this corpus favour older filings and should be read as a signal of influence, not of current commercial relevance.
Each row carries its publication number; clicking a row searches Eureka by that number.
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Three read-throughs from the filing trend, the citation profile and the assignee momentum data, each with a direct implication for a filing or freedom-to-operate decision.
Core claims were staked early
The peak year of 11 filings in 2018 has not been matched since, and the latest partial year sits at 2. New entrants are filing into a space where the foundational mechanical-property claims — pre-straining, heat setting, superelastic transformation control — are already occupied by art from the 1990s and 2000s.
Influence sits with decades-old patents
The most-cited record in this landscape carries 271 citations and predates most current filers by twenty-plus years. High citation counts here mark historical influence on the field's vocabulary, not which claims currently constrain a new product.
Named leaders have gone quiet
Every assignee with the strongest historical filing and co-assignment activity shows zero filings in the latest tracked year. That does not mean the technology is abandoned — medical-device shape-memory alloy work often continues under different claim framing — but it does mean the loudest historical filers are not currently adding to this specific claim set.
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to shape-memory alloy mechanical properties, with the prior art for and against each one.
Who holds the claim space
The ranking is concentrated among a handful of medical-device and materials firms with long filing histories, backed by a long tail of single or double-filing entrants — individual inventors, research institutes and smaller device makers.
Collaboration is thin and repeat
Only ten co-assignee pairings appear in the full landscape, and the strongest of them repeat the same corporate assignee against different named inventors. This points to in-house R&D teams filing jointly with staff engineers rather than cross-company partnerships.
US-centred, with real EPO depth
The United States receives more than a third of all filings, consistent with the medical-device weighting of the dataset. Europe and PCT routes carry meaningful secondary volume; China and Japan sit roughly level with each other, well below the top two.
The historical leaders are dormant
Firms with the deepest filing histories in this landscape — the cardiovascular, materials and defence-research names that anchor the ranking table — show no filings in the most recent tracked year. New activity, if it is happening, is coming from outside this named group.
| Assignee | Recent year | YoY |
|---|---|---|
| Abbott Cardiovascular Systems Inc. | 0 | — |
| W. L. Gore & Associates, Inc. (Gore Enterprise Holdings) | 0 | — |
| QinetiQ Limited | 0 | — |
| Tomotsu (Protrusion) Co., Ltd. | 0 | — |
| W. L. Gore & Associates, Inc. | 0 | — |
| EV3 Inc. | 0 | — |
| Council of Scientific and Industrial Research | 0 | — |
| Cook Medical Technologies LLC | 0 | — |
Where to take this analysis
This landscape identifies the pattern; confirming freedom-to-operate on a specific formulation, heat-treatment cycle or device application requires drilling into individual claim sets.
Check priority dates against your own filing
Foundational pre-straining and heat-setting patents in this space date to the 1990s and 2000s. Before drafting new composition or process claims, confirm your invention's priority date against this earlier art rather than against recent filings.
Search prior art in Eureka →Watch the dormant leaders for re-entry
Every top-ranked assignee shows zero filings in the latest year. A renewed filing from any of them — or a shift in their IPC targeting — is a meaningful competitive signal worth monitoring directly.
Set up assignee monitoring in Eureka →Map the under-claimed branches to your product
Powder metallurgy, dental-specific wire claims and sterilisation-compatible fatigue treatments show lighter claim density than the core metallurgy classes. If your work touches any of these, a focused novelty search is worth the time before assuming the space is crowded.
Run a white space search in Eureka →Questions practitioners ask about this landscape
The most-cited foundational patents in this landscape belong to medical-device and materials firms whose filings date back to the 1990s and 2000s, including patents on strain-hardened nickel-titanium devices and sputtered TiNi shape-memory alloys. Current filing activity, however, shows every top-ranked historical assignee at zero filings in the most recent tracked year, meaning the loudest historical names are not the same as today's active filers. Anyone assessing freedom-to-operate should treat the citation leaders as foundational prior art to clear, not as the current competitive set.
Filing peaked at 11 families in 2018 and has declined since, sitting at 4 by the 2022 midpoint and just 2 in the latest partial year. This pattern is typical of a claim space where the core mechanical-property mechanisms — superelastic transformation control, pre-straining for fatigue resistance, heat setting — were staked out early, leaving later entrants to file narrower, more specific improvements. It does not necessarily mean commercial interest in shape-memory alloys is declining, only that broad foundational claims are largely already taken.
Superelasticity claims typically cover the alloy's ability to undergo large recoverable strain through a reversible phase transformation, while functional fatigue claims cover how well that recoverable behaviour survives repeated loading cycles without degrading. In this landscape both concepts appear together in search terms because commercially useful nitinol devices need both properties simultaneously — a wire or stent that is superelastic but fatigues quickly is not viable for implantable use. Patents like the representative pre-straining method filing address functional fatigue directly by controlling non-recoverable strain during manufacture.
The core metallurgy sits in C22F (non-ferrous metal treatment, 321 records) and C22C (alloys, 209 records), but a large share of downstream value is captured in medical classifications: A61F for implants and prostheses (124 records), A61L for sterilising and disinfecting (81), A61B for diagnosis and surgery (67), and A61C for dentistry (38). A device developer should search across all of these rather than treating the metallurgy classes as the whole picture, since implant-specific claims often layer on top of a base alloy treatment patent.
Powder metallurgy processing of NiTi (B22F, 23 records) and heat-treatment cycle claims (C21D, 24 records) carry noticeably lower filing density than the core C22F and C22C classes, as does dental-specific superelastic wire application (A61C, 38 records) relative to the much larger implant category. These lighter-claimed branches are worth a focused novelty search before assuming the broader shape-memory alloy space is fully occupied, particularly since overall filing activity has slowed since 2018 rather than intensified into these adjacent areas.
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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.