Silicone Elastomer Simulation Patents: Who Leads, Where Gaps Are 2026
- Filing activity has cooled since its 2020 peak. 38 families filed that year against a 2022 midpoint of just 11, and the curve has not recovered — this is a mature, not a growing, claim space.
- The technology sits mostly outside pure materials science. The heaviest IPC subclasses are surgical diagnosis, implants and prostheses, and downhole drilling — silicone simulation claims are riding on medical devices and oilfield tools, not standalone elastomer chemistry.
- No assignee is currently active. Every tracked assignee, including MIT, Illinois and Caltech, shows zero filings in the latest year — recent activity is dispersed among newer or smaller entrants rather than concentrated at the historical leaders.
Filing growth compares 2021 (16 records) with 2024 (8) — 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 335 records in scope (CR5), not by the ranked leaders only.
What this landscape covers
This landscape tracks patent families that combine silicone elastomer materials — silicone rubber, polysiloxane compounds — with simulation methods: hyperelastic modeling, cure kinetics modeling, and finite element simulation. The 335 families in scope span filings from 2015 through the 2026 cut-off, drawn primarily from US, PCT, and European filings.
Rather than a single materials-science cluster, the corpus splits across application domains: wearable and implantable medical devices, downhole drilling tools, geophysical survey equipment, and laminated or layered composite structures. Simulation and modeling claims here function as supporting method claims inside device or process patents, not as a standalone silicone-chemistry field.
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Filing trend and technology composition
Annual filing volume and the IPC subclass breakdown show where silicone elastomer simulation claims actually land, and how filing pace has moved since 2017.
A peak in 2020, then a decline
Filings rose from 10 in 2017 to a peak of 38 in 2020, then fell back toward a midpoint of 11 by 2022. The most recent years should be read with the usual 18-month publication lag in mind, so the true 2025-2026 count will sit above what is currently visible — but the multi-year downward trend from the 2020 peak predates that lag effect.
Medical devices and drilling dominate the IPC mix
A61B (diagnosis and surgery) and A61F (implants and prostheses) together account for the largest share of records, closely followed by E21B (drilling) and G01V (geophysics). Layered products (B32B), soil reclamation (B09C), hydrocarbon refining (C10G) and material testing (G01N) form a secondary tier — confirming that silicone simulation IP is scattered across application verticals rather than concentrated in one materials category.
Shares are the percentage of the 335 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
Go deeper on Silicone Elastomer Simulation and Modeling with Eureka
This page is one run against one query. Ask Eureka your own question about silicone elastomer simulation and modeling and every answer comes back with the patent numbers behind it.
Try EurekaMost-cited records and a representative recent filing
Flexible dual-modality system and method for continuous blood pressure monitoring
A flexible dual-modality system and methods for continuous blood pressure monitoring are provided. The system includes a first layer including a skin friendly contact layer, a pulse waveform sensor, and an ultrasound transducer common ground electrode layer, each set of pulse waveform sensors including two pressure sensors; a second layer including a cavity, a copper cube, an ultrasound transducer array, a capsulation material; and a third layer including an ultrasound transducer stimulating electrode layer, and a skin friendly contact layer. The method includes extracting blood vessel parameters from signals measured by a dual-modality device; combining the basic vascular parameters to determine blood pressure.Filed by The Chinese University of Hong Kong, published 2026-04-23 — illustrates how silicone-layer simulation and modeling work now shows up inside wearable biosensor architectures rather than in elastomer-chemistry filings.
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | US20100002402A1 | Stretchable and Foldable Electronic Devices | 436 |
| 2 | US7011154B2 | In situ recovery from a kerogen and liquid hydrocarbon containing formation | 383 |
| 3 | US7077199B2 | In situ thermal processing of an oil reservoir formation | 356 |
| 4 | US6969123B2 | Upgrading and mining of coal | 340 |
| 5 | US7066254B2 | In situ thermal processing of a tar sands formation | 337 |
| 6 | US20030201098A1 | In situ recovery from a hydrocarbon containing formation using one or more simulations | 310 |
| 7 | US7104319B2 | In situ thermal processing of a heavy oil diatomite formation | 307 |
| 8 | US6991045B2 | Forming openings in a hydrocarbon containing formation using magnetic tracking | 306 |
| 9 | US6932155B2 | In situ thermal processing of a hydrocarbon containing formation via backproducing through a heater well | 304 |
| 10 | US6383960B1 | Layered absorbent structure | 301 |
Citation counts reward older filings simply by virtue of longer exposure to the citing corpus; treat this table as a map of historical influence, not current commercial relevance.
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Browse MCP servers →What the numbers mean for filing strategy
Three patterns stand out once the raw counts are read against filing dates and IPC codes.
The claim space has cooled, not matured
A sharp rise to 38 families in 2020 followed by a drop to 11 by 2022 points to a burst of filing activity around a specific application wave — likely medical wearables — rather than steady organic growth. Flat or falling filing counts mean less new prior art to clear, but also fewer signals of where the field is heading next.
Medical device claims outweigh drilling and geophysics combined
A61B and A61F records together exceed the combined count of E21B and G01V, the two largest oilfield-adjacent subclasses. Simulation methods developed for downhole tool modeling appear to have migrated into implant and diagnostic device claims, or vice versa — either way, a search limited to one vertical will miss prior art sitting in the other.
No incumbent is currently filing
Universities and majors that built the historical base — including MIT, the University of Illinois, and Caltech — show zero filings in the most recent tracked year. That does not mean the field is abandoned; publication lag means recent work from these same institutions may not yet be visible, and new entrants may be filling the gap.
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to silicone elastomer simulation and modeling, with the prior art for and against each one.
Who holds the claim space, and where it opens up
Filing counts concentrate around a small set of universities and industrial assignees, with several co-filing pairs suggesting joint research programmes rather than independent competition.
Academic pairs dominate the joint-filing table
The strongest co-assignee pair in this dataset links the University of Illinois with Northwestern University, followed by Illinois with Washington University in St. Louis, and MIT with Brigham and Women's Hospital. These are research collaborations translated into joint IP, concentrated in the medical-device end of the corpus.
US filing dominates, PCT and EPO close behind
The United States accounts for the largest single share of receiving-office filings, with WIPO PCT applications and European filings each in a similar secondary range. Germany and Australia trail well behind, suggesting most applicants treat the US as the primary market and use PCT or EPO routes for optional international coverage rather than filing broadly from the outset.
The most-cited records predate the current filing wave
The highest-citation documents in this corpus are older, foundational filings in stretchable electronics and in situ hydrocarbon processing — fields adjacent to, but not identical with, current silicone elastomer simulation claims. High citation counts here reflect years of exposure, not current commercial weight.
| Assignee | Recent year | YoY |
|---|---|---|
| Kimberly-Clark Worldwide, Inc. | 0 | — |
| Shell Oil Company | 0 | — |
| Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) | 0 | — |
| Qualcomm Incorporated | 0 | — |
| The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois | 0 | — |
| California Institute of Technology (Caltech) | 0 | — |
| The Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University | 0 | — |
| Carbon, Inc. | 0 | — |
Where to take this analysis
The filing and citation patterns here raise more specific questions than a static table can answer — the next step is usually to narrow the search to a single application vertical or assignee.
Narrow to one application domain
Medical-device claims and drilling-tool claims use overlapping simulation methods but different prior art bases. Splitting the search by IPC subclass before drafting avoids missing citations from the wrong vertical.
Run a focused search in EurekaTrack dormant assignees for renewed activity
Zero recent filings from historical leaders does not confirm exit from the field — publication lag can hide work already underway. Set an alert on the named institutions rather than assuming the gap is permanent.
Set an assignee alert in EurekaTest claim language against the under-claimed branches
The gaps identified above are candidates for a freedom-to-operate check before drafting, not confirmed white space — a targeted prior-art pull against the specific claim language is the next step.
Draft and check claims in EurekaCommon questions on this landscape
In this dataset it means a patent family whose claims combine a silicone-based material — silicone rubber, silicone elastomer, or polysiloxane — with a computational or predictive method such as hyperelastic modeling, cure kinetics modeling, or finite element simulation. Many of these are not standalone materials patents; they are device or process patents that use a silicone simulation step to justify a design or manufacturing claim. That is why the top IPC subclasses here are medical devices and drilling tools rather than a materials-chemistry classification.
The evidence shows a rise to 38 families in 2020 followed by a drop to roughly 11 by the 2022 midpoint, with no clear recovery afterward. This pattern is consistent with a concentrated filing wave tied to a specific application push, most likely wearable or implantable medical devices, rather than steady long-term growth in the underlying simulation methods. Readers should also account for publication lag: filings from the last one to two years are undercounted in any dataset, so the most recent years understate true activity.
The dataset points to a mix of universities and industrial assignees, with University of Illinois, Northwestern University, MIT, and Caltech among the more active historical filers, often co-filing with hospital or research partners. However, every tracked assignee shows zero filings in the latest tracked year, meaning current leadership is unsettled — the historical leaders may be dormant, mid-lag, or ceding ground to newer entrants not yet prominent in the ranking.
Based on the IPC composition, the medical-device and drilling verticals are the most heavily claimed, while branches like multi-layer laminate cure kinetics, downhole seal degradation modeling, and soil-remediation elastomer barriers show comparatively lighter direct claiming. These are not proven gaps — they are areas warranting a targeted freedom-to-operate search before committing to a specific claim structure, since broader materials or drilling patents may still cover related methods.
Citation counts in a searched patent corpus consistently favor older filings, simply because they have had more years to accumulate citations from later applicants. The most-cited records in this dataset date back to earlier stretchable-electronics and in-situ hydrocarbon-processing filings, which are foundational but not necessarily the patents most relevant to a 2026 filing decision. Use citation rank as a signal of historical influence on the field, and check filing dates and current assignee activity separately before treating a highly cited patent as a live blocking risk.
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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.