Smart & Digital Manufacturing Patents: Who Leads, Where the Gaps Are 2026
Smart and digital manufacturing patents: mapping who holds the ground and where it is still open
Concentrated at the top. The five most active filers account for 122 of 275 records in scope (44.4%), and the leading ten hold 65.8% — a narrow group sets the terms in this field. Filings rose from 15 in 2017 to a peak of 41 in 2023, then fell to 12 by 2024 — a 64% drop across that three-year window. 2025 and 2026 figures will rise as later-filed applications publish, so treat the most recent two years as a floor, not a trend.
- 1STRONG FORCE VCN PORTFOLIO 2019 LLC42
- 2FIRESTORM LABS INC24
- 3RELATIVITY SPACE INC22
- 4CARNEGIE MELLON UNIV18
- 5SANDVIK INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY AB16
See the full smart & digital manufacturing patent landscape 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 about this landscape
Who are the leading patent holders in smart and digital manufacturing?
This dataset ranks 80 companies and institutions by patent family count, with the leading assignee holding 42 of the 275 records in scope. The top five combined account for 44.4% of all records, and the top ten hold 65.8%, so a small group of filers — spanning additive-manufacturing equipment makers, industrial software firms and universities — controls most of the documented claim space. Beyond the leading ten, coverage spreads thinly across a long tail of single- and double-digit filers.
Is smart manufacturing patent filing growing or slowing down?
Filings rose from 15 in 2017 to a peak of 41 in 2023, then fell to 12 by 2024, a 64% drop over that three-year span. However, patent publication typically lags actual filing by about 18 months, so the 2025 and 2026 figures in any dataset are still incomplete and will rise as more applications publish. Treat the recent dip as a partial-data artefact rather than confirmed evidence that filing activity is slowing.
Which technology areas dominate smart and digital manufacturing patents?
Additive manufacturing (IPC class B33Y) and plastics shaping (B29C) are the two largest categories, appearing on 40.0% and 38.5% of the 275 records respectively. Powder metallurgy, control and regulating systems, and AI-based computing follow at meaningfully smaller shares. Because a single record can carry several IPC classes, these percentages add up to more than 100%, and they show that physical process and machine claims still outweigh the software and analytics layer in filing volume.
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 Smart & Digital Manufacturing Patent Landscape covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-08-31. 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.