One assignee leads the ranked field clearly, with 93 records against 19 at fifth place and 13 at tenth place. The top 5 assignees combined hold 43.2% of all 549 records in scope, and the top 10 extend that to 57.2%. Beyond that point the ranking runs to 100 assignees with a long tail of low-count filers, so the field is concentrated at the top but not dominated by a single company outright.

The bulk of filings classify under A47F, shop and display fittings, which covers 71.8% of the 549 records, and F25D, refrigerators and cooling, at 41.9%. Smaller shares fall under F25B refrigeration and heat pumps (16.8%), with air conditioning, heat exchange, furniture and signage classes each under 3%. Because records can carry multiple classes, these figures describe overlap, not a strict breakdown of the field.

Filings grew substantially through the middle of the period, with the count nearly tripling from 4 in 2021 to 12 in 2024, a +200% increase over that span, and 2023 stands as the peak year so far at 33 records. Figures for 2025 and 2026 look lower, but that reflects the roughly 18-month lag between filing and publication rather than an actual slowdown. Any read on the very latest years should account for that lag before drawing conclusions.

WO2016081393A1, assigned to Carrier Corporation and published in 2016, claims an air curtain type refrigerated display cabinet with a cold air auxiliary passage built into the display rack that draws from the main cold air passage and directs output at an interior hot-spot region. It targets the specific failure mode of open-front cabinets where the air curtain weakens locally. New designs that use a different airflow-augmentation mechanism to address the same hot-spot problem, rather than a secondary passage fed from the main circuit, would sit outside this specific claim structure, but a freedom-to-operate check against the full claim set is the only reliable way to confirm that.

The technology composition data shows claim density concentrated in shop-fitting mechanics (A47F) and general cooling (F25D), while air conditioning and ventilation (F24F) and heat-exchange apparatus (F28D) each sit at 2.2% or below of the 549 records. Sub-areas such as lighting heat-load compensation, defrost strategy tuned for multi-deck cabinets, and sensor-driven air curtain feedback control show comparatively few dedicated filings relative to the core fixture claims. These are reasonable areas to search more deeply before assuming the space is occupied, since low filing density in a functional area is not the same as the problem being unsolved.