Ship Design & Naval Architecture Patents: Leaders & Filing Trends 2026
- 20.7% of all 652 records sit with just five assignees, while a long tail of single- and low-filing entrants makes up the rest of the ranked field.
- Filing fell 31% from 2021 to 2024 (16 to 11 for the tracked leader), a real pullback in the last complete filing years, not an artefact of publication lag.
- B63B ships and marine vessels covers 73.0% of records, meaning almost every filing touches core hull and vessel structure claims rather than adjacent systems.
Filing growth compares 2021 (16 records) with 2024 (11) — 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 652 records in scope (CR5), not by the ranked leaders only.
What the ship design and naval architecture patent record shows
Ship design and naval architecture patents span hull structure, vessel motion control, marine propulsion and the offshore systems that keep a vessel operating in open water. This landscape covers 652 published records filed or published between 2015 and the August 2026 data cut-off, ranked across 100 assignees in the dataset. The filing pattern is uneven: a handful of shipyards, classification societies and marine technology firms account for a disproportionate share of the record, while most named entities appear only once or twice.
Peak filing activity so far sits in 2019, and the trend has since eased through the last years that can be treated as complete. Because publication typically lags filing by around 18 months, the most recent one to two years in any chart will always look thinner than they will once the backlog clears — that lag, not a genuine drop, explains the low counts right at the end of the series.
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Filing trend and technology composition
Two views of the same 652 records: how filing volume has moved year on year, and which IPC subclasses carry the claim density.
Filing trend, 2017–2026
Filings rose from 12 in 2017 to a peak of 31 in 2019, then eased; the tracked leader-to-2024 comparison shows a 31% decline from 16 filings in 2021 to 11 in 2024. Treat 2025 and 2026 as undercounted rather than as continued decline, since publication has not caught up with filing yet.
Technology composition by IPC subclass
B63B (ships and marine vessels) dominates at 73.0% of the 652 records in scope. Naval vessels (B63G, 7.8%), navigation and gyroscopes (G01C, 6.4%), marine propulsion (B63H, 6.1%) and layered composite structures (B32B, 6.0%) form a second tier; radar/sonar positioning (G01S, 3.8%) and digital data processing (G06F, 4.0%) are the smallest classes tracked, suggesting software and sensing claims are still a minority share of the filed record even though they appear throughout the most-cited documents.
Shares are the percentage of the 652 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
Go deeper on Ship Design & Naval Architecture Patent Landscape with Eureka
This page is one run against one query. Ask Eureka your own question about ship design & naval architecture patent landscape and every answer comes back with the patent numbers behind it.
Try EurekaRepresentative filing and most-cited prior art
WO2025184528A1 — Electric marine vessel and propulsion system
Electric marine vessel systems, other marine vessels systems, subsystems thereof, and other marine-vessel-related apparatuses, devices, and components, and methods of operating and implementing same, are disclosed. A marine vessel system includes a propulsor and a marine vessel; the propulsor includes a propeller and a primary structure including a motor. The marine vessel includes a longitudinal axis between bow and stern, at least one hull structure, a deck structure, and at least one adjustable structure, with the propulsor supported at least indirectly upon the deck structure or hull structure.Filed by Flamingo Electric Inc., published 2025-09-04 — close to the data cut-off, so citation and family data for it are still forming.
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | US6469664B1 | Method, apparatus, and computer program products for alerting surface vessels to hazardous conditions | 213 |
| 2 | US20040090195A1 | Efficient control, monitoring and energy devices for vehicles such as watercraft | 211 |
| 3 | US5778813A | Composite steel structural plastic sandwich plate systems | 200 |
| 4 | US20090126616A1 | Offshore floating production, storage, and off-loading vessel for use in ice-covered and clear water applicat… | 146 |
| 5 | US5417597A | Vessel with machinery modules outside watertight hull | 125 |
| 6 | US3872819A | Wave-actuated horizontal array stretcher | 106 |
| 7 | US6750815B2 | Method, apparatus, and computer program products for alerting surface vessels to hazardous conditions | 94 |
| 8 | US6734808B1 | Method, apparatus and computer program products for alerting submersible vessels to hazardous conditions | 79 |
| 9 | US7958835B2 | Offshore floating production, storage, and off-loading vessel for use in ice-covered and clear water applicat… | 69 |
| 10 | US5218919A | Method and device for the installation of double hull protection | 67 |
Citation counts are drawn from a searched corpus and favour older filings; treat them as a signal of influence on later filers, not as a measure 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 numbers mean for a filing decision
Three read-throughs from the concentration, trend and citation data that matter for where to file next.
The top of the field is thin, not dominant
Five assignees hold 135 of 652 records (20.7%), and the top 10 combine for just 31.9%. That leaves roughly two-thirds of the record with entities holding a handful of filings each — a long tail rather than a small set of gatekeepers controlling the space.
Filing has pulled back over the last complete years
The decline from 16 filings in 2021 to 11 in 2024 is a real -31% move across the last three years that can be treated as complete, following a 2019 peak of 31. It signals a maturing claim space rather than a technology in early build-out.
Core hull and vessel claims crowd out adjacent systems
Almost three-quarters of records touch B63B, the general ships-and-marine-vessels class, while navigation, propulsion, composites and sensing subclasses each sit in the single digits. That gap between the dominant class and everything else is where less-claimed technical branches tend to sit.
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to ship design & naval architecture patent landscape, with the prior art for and against each one.
Who is filing, and where the claim space is still open
The assignee ranking mixes shipyards, classification societies, defence contractors and newer marine-electric entrants; recent-year momentum has slowed across the entities tracked for the latest filing year.
One shipyard-scale filer sets the pace
The leading assignee holds 50 of the 652 records in scope, well ahead of fifth place at 18 and tenth place at 13 — a steep drop-off that marks this as a leader-plus-tail field rather than a flat distribution.
Recent-year filing has gone quiet at the top
Several of the most active historical assignees show zero filings in the latest tracked year, consistent with the broader 2021-to-2024 pullback. That does not mean these firms have exited the space — publication lag means 2025-2026 activity is still incomplete in the record.
Co-filing is limited and clustered
Only 10 co-assignee pairs appear across the dataset, with the strongest pairings reaching 4 shared filings. Co-development in this field is the exception rather than the norm, which favours solo filers securing their own claim boundaries.
| Assignee | Recent year | YoY |
|---|---|---|
| Jurong Shipyard Pte Ltd | 0 | — |
| Fern Investments Ltd | 0 | — |
| Honeywell International Inc. | 0 | — |
| Arcadis Ltd | 0 | — |
| Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Ltd. | 0 | — |
| Navatek Ltd | 0 | — |
| Spartec Inc. | 0 | — |
| Det Norske Veritas AS (DNV) | 0 | — |
Where to take this next
The dataset points to a field with a settled leader tier and a large open tail. Two directions make sense depending on what a reader needs to decide.
Map a freedom-to-operate position
Run the specific hull, propulsion or motion-control claim language you plan to file against the most-cited records and the leading assignees' active families before drafting.
Explore in Eureka →Track the under-claimed branches
Sonar-integrated hull sensing and digital vessel monitoring sit well below the core B63B claim density — worth a closer prior-art pull before committing R&D there.
Explore in Eureka →Frequently asked questions
The ranking covers 100 assignees across 652 records, and it is a genuine leader-plus-tail structure rather than an evenly split field. The top-ranked assignee holds 50 records, with a steep drop to 18 at fifth place and 13 at tenth, and the top 5 combined account for 20.7% of all 652 records in scope. Most other named entities in the ranking hold only a handful of filings each, so the practical picture is one dominant filer, a mid-tier of shipyards and classification societies, and a long tail of single-filing entrants.
Filing peaked in 2019 at 31 records and has since pulled back, with the tracked leader-to-2024 comparison showing a 31% decline from 16 filings in 2021 to 11 in 2024 — the last years that can be treated as complete. Figures for 2025 and 2026 should not be read as confirming a continued drop, because publication typically lags filing by around 18 months and those years are still filling in. On the evidence available, the field looks like it is consolidating rather than accelerating.
B63B, the general ships-and-marine-vessels IPC subclass, appears on 73.0% of the 652 records in scope, making it by far the densest claim area. Naval vessels (B63G) and navigation/gyroscope systems (G01C) each sit near 7-8%, with marine propulsion, layered composite structures, hydraulic machines, digital data processing and radar/sonar positioning each in the single digits. Because a single record can carry multiple IPC classes, these shares add up to well over 100%, but the gap between B63B and every other class shows most filings are anchored in core hull and vessel structure rather than adjacent electronics or software systems.
WO2025184528A1, filed by Flamingo Electric Inc. and published September 2025, claims an electric marine vessel system built around a propulsor with a motor-integrated primary structure, mounted on an adjustable structure attached to the deck or hull. Because it published so close to this dataset's cut-off, its citation and family footprint are still forming, so its practical blocking effect cannot yet be read from citation counts. Anyone filing adjustable-mount electric propulsion claims should check its specific claim language directly rather than relying on citation volume as a proxy for scope.
The composition data points to sonar-integrated hull sensing, digital vessel monitoring software, and composite sandwich hull panels as branches with comparatively thin filing density relative to the dominant B63B hull and vessel class. These are not unclaimed, but they sit well below the core structural classes in record share, which typically means less crowded prior art for a narrowly drafted claim. A freedom-to-operate search focused on the specific sub-claim language, rather than the class as a whole, is the right next step before committing R&D budget there.
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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.