Single Crystal Superalloy Patents: Who Leads, Where Gaps Are 2026
Single Crystal Superalloy Casting Patents: Filing Concentration and Open Claim Space
53.1% of all 420 records sit with just five assignees, and 76.9% with ten — this is a field where the top of the ranking absorbs most of the filing activity. Filings peaked in 2019 at 9 for the corpus and have since declined; 2021 to 2024 alone shows a -100% swing (4 to 0). Treat 2025 and 2026 as incomplete — publication typically lags filing by around 18 months, so recent-year counts will fill in as more records publish.
- 1CANNON MUSKEGON CORP80
- 2UNITED TECH CORP43
- 3IHI CORP39
- 4OXFORD UNIVERSITY INNOVATION LTD32
- 5GENERAL ELECTRIC CO29
See the full single crystal superalloy casting 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 on this landscape
Who holds the most single crystal superalloy casting patents?
The ranking in this corpus of 420 records is led by a single assignee with 80 records, well ahead of the fifth-ranked holder at 29 and the tenth at 11. The ranked leaders overall include turbine OEMs such as General Electric, Rolls-Royce and United Technologies/RTX, alongside foundry and alloy specialists like Cannon Muskegon and Howmet, and public research bodies such as Oxford University Innovation and Japan’s National Institute for Materials Science. The top five assignees together account for 53.1% of all 420 records, so a small set of portfolios covers over half the field.
Is single crystal superalloy casting patent activity growing or shrinking?
Based on the years that can be treated as complete, filing has declined: the corpus shows 4 filings in 2021 falling to 0 in 2024, a -100% change over that span, after peaking at 9 filings in 2019. Because publication typically lags filing by around 18 months, the 2025 and 2026 counts in this dataset are still incomplete and should not be read as confirming a continued drop. A fair read is that filing activity slowed through the last fully-published year, with the most recent years still an open question.
What technology areas dominate single crystal superalloy casting patents?
Alloy composition claims under IPC class C22C appear in 64.0% of the 420 records, making it the single largest category, followed by crystal growth process claims under C30B at 41.0% and turbine-component claims under F01D at 30.2%. Casting-specific claims under B22D sit lower at 15.0%, with coating (C23C), joining (B23K) and general metal working (B23P) each below 10%. Because records can carry multiple IPC classes, these shares add up to more than 100% of the record total, which is expected rather than an error.
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 Single Crystal Superalloy Casting 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.