Smart & Digital Manufacturing Patents: Who Leads, Where the Gaps Are 2026
- 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.
- Additive and plastics shaping dominate the claim map. B33Y (40.0%) and B29C (38.5%) cover the most records, while control systems, AI and image processing classes trail well behind — a gap worth checking before you file.
- Filing has cooled from its 2023 peak of 41. 2021 to 2024 filings fell 64%, though 2025-2026 counts are still incomplete given typical publication lag and should not be read as a slowdown yet.
Filing growth compares 2021 (33 records) with 2024 (12) — 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 275 records in scope (CR5), not by the ranked leaders only.
What this landscape covers
This landscape tracks 275 published records filed against smart and digital manufacturing concepts — process temperature and monitoring, tool geometry, material feed, dimensional tolerance and manufacturing cell control — combined with digital and smart manufacturing terminology. The scope spans additive manufacturing hardware, powder metallurgy, control and regulating systems, and the AI and data-processing layers now sitting on top of physical production equipment.
Filing activity runs from 2015 through the 2026 data cut-off, with a clear peak in 2023. Because publication typically lags filing by around 18 months, the final two years in any trend chart understate real filing volume and should be read as provisional rather than declining.
Filing trends and technology composition
Two views of the same 275-record dataset: how filing volume has moved year over year, and which IPC subclasses carry the claim density that shapes where new filings can still land cleanly.
A 2023 peak followed by an incomplete tail
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.
Additive manufacturing and plastics shaping lead the classification mix
B33Y (additive manufacturing) and B29C (plastics shaping) each cover roughly two in five of all 275 records, with powder metallurgy (B22F) not far behind. Control systems (G05B), AI-based computing (G06N) and general data processing (G06F, G06Q, G06T) appear across meaningfully smaller — though still substantial — shares, reflecting how much of the claim activity in this field is still anchored to physical process hardware rather than the software layer above it.
Shares are the percentage of the 275 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
Go deeper on Smart & Digital Manufacturing Patent Landscape with Eureka
This page is one run against one query. Ask Eureka your own question about smart & digital manufacturing patent landscape and every answer comes back with the patent numbers behind it.
Try EurekaRepresentative filing and most-cited records
Pantograph assembly for digital manufacturing system
A digital manufacturing system for producing first and second objects comprises a platen, a gantry, a pantograph extrusion head system and first and second sets of extruders. The platen defines a workspace upon which the objects are produced; the gantry defines a headspace displaced from the workspace. The extrusion head system is mounted to the gantry for movement in the headspace, and the sets of extruders are connected to it to deposit extrusion material on the workspace to build the objects.Filed by Stratasys, this 2010 filing sits early in the additive manufacturing lineage this dataset tracks and anchors a family of related extrusion-head claims.
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | US20220187847A1 | Robot Fleet Management for Value Chain Networks | 341 |
| 2 | US20180341248A1 | Real-time adaptive control of additive manufacturing processes using machine learning | 336 |
| 3 | US20220197306A1 | Job Parsing in Robot Fleet Resource Configuration | 327 |
| 4 | US20100327479A1 | Consumable materials having customized characteristics | 243 |
| 5 | US20200166909A1 | Real-time adaptive control of manufacturing processes using machine learning | 240 |
| 6 | US20220245574A1 | Systems, Methods, Kits, and Apparatuses for Digital Product Network Systems and Biology-Based Value Chain Net… | 194 |
| 7 | US7710671B1 | Laminated electrically tintable windows | 146 |
| 8 | WO2018217903A1 | Real-time adaptive control of additive manufacturing processes using machine learning | 143 |
| 9 | WO2022133330A1 | Robot fleet management and additive manufacturing for value chain networks | 138 |
| 10 | US20230173395A1 | Systems and methods with integrated gaming engines and smart contracts | 132 |
Citation counts inside a searched corpus favour older filings; treat them as a signal of influence within this dataset, not as a measure of current technical importance.
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Reading concentration, technology composition and citation patterns together points to where claim space is already crowded and where it is not.
A narrow group sets the terms
The leading five assignees combined account for 122 of the 275 records in scope, and the leading ten hold 65.8%. New entrants are filing into a field where a small number of players already occupy a large share of the claim space, particularly around additive manufacturing hardware.
Physical process claims still dominate
Additive manufacturing (B33Y) and plastics shaping (B29C) each appear on well over a third of all 275 records, ahead of control systems, AI and image processing. That density means machine-level and material-feed claims are the most contested ground, not the analytics layered on top.
Cooling from a 2023 peak, not a collapse
Filings dropped from 33 in 2021 to 12 in 2024 after peaking at 41 in 2023. Given the roughly 18-month publication lag, 2025-2026 figures are still filling in, so this reads as a post-peak correction rather than confirmed long-term decline.
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to smart & digital manufacturing patent landscape, with the prior art for and against each one.
Who is filing, and where the gaps sit
The ranked leaders in this 80-company list range from an initial filer at 42 records down to single-digit counts by the tenth position, with a long tail beyond that holding only one or two records each.
One filer sets the pace
The leading assignee alone holds 42 of the 275 records in scope, well ahead of the fifth-ranked filer at 16 and the tenth-ranked filer at 9. That gap between first and fifth place is itself a signal of how much of the additive-manufacturing and fleet-management claim space one organisation has staked out.
A wide base of single- and double-digit filers
Beyond the leading ten, the ranking spreads across a further seventy companies, universities and research bodies, most holding only a handful of records. This is typical of a field where core machine and process claims are held by a few incumbents while specialised or academic filers stake out narrower niches.
Limited but real cross-filing
Ten co-assignee pairs appear in this dataset, the strongest linking two universities on shared additive-manufacturing filings, alongside a materials company paired with named individual inventors. Collaboration is the exception rather than the norm here, which keeps most claim strategy single-owner.
| Assignee | Recent year | YoY |
|---|---|---|
| STRONG FORCE TX PORTFOLIO 2018 LLC | 1 | — |
| Strong Force VCN Portfolio 2019 LLC | 0 | -100% |
| Firestorm Labs, Inc. | 0 | -100% |
| Relativity Space, Inc. | 0 | — |
| Carnegie Mellon University | 0 | — |
| The Arizona Board of Regents on behalf of the University of Arizona | 0 | -100% |
| Stratasys, Inc. | 0 | — |
| MELD Manufacturing Corp | 0 | — |
Where to take this from here
The dataset points to where claim space is dense and where it thins out. Turning that into a filing or freedom-to-operate decision means going deeper on the specific classes and assignees that matter to your work.
Check freedom-to-operate against the leading filers
With 44.4% of records held by five assignees, a freedom-to-operate review should start with their families before broader searching.
Explore assignee families in EurekaMap the under-claimed branches in detail
Sub-areas like dimensional tolerance sensing and multi-material feed control show thinner coverage than the core additive-manufacturing classes.
Run a white-space search in EurekaTrack filings as 2025-2026 data fills in
Publication lag means the most recent two years understate real activity; revisit the trend once later filings publish.
Set up a monitoring alert in EurekaCommon questions about this landscape
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.
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.
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.
Relative to the dense coverage in additive manufacturing and plastics shaping, sub-areas like in-process dimensional tolerance sensing, multi-material feed rate control, manufacturing cell orchestration software and AI-driven tool geometry optimisation show thinner representation in this dataset. These are not unclaimed, but they carry lower filing density than the core hardware classes, which typically means more room for a differentiated claim. Any white-space assessment should be paired with a targeted search on the specific sub-class before committing to a filing strategy.
US20100021580A1, assigned to Stratasys and filed in 2010, describes a digital manufacturing system built around a platen, gantry and pantograph extrusion head system with multiple sets of extruders for producing objects with different materials. It sits early in the additive manufacturing lineage this dataset tracks and represents foundational extrusion-head architecture that later filings in the field have had to design around or build on. Its early filing date and detailed mechanical claims make it a useful reference point for anyone assessing freedom-to-operate in multi-extruder additive manufacturing systems.
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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.