Tailings Dam Patents: Who Leads, Where the Gaps Are 2026
- One filer dominates. the leading assignee holds 37 records against a fifth-place count of just 2, with a long tail of single-filing entrants behind it.
- Filing kept climbing through 2024. up 25% from 2021 to 2024, even though the peak year on record so far is 2020 at 25 filings.
- Water handling dominates the claim space. C02F water treatment and B03B wet separation together cover most records, while foundations and refuse-handling classes barely register.
Filing growth compares 2021 (4 records) with 2024 (5) — 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.
What this landscape covers
Tailings dam design and monitoring sits at the intersection of mineral processing and geotechnical engineering: how mine operators dewater slurry, manage the phreatic surface inside an embankment, sequence upstream construction lifts, and instrument a facility to catch liquefaction risk before it becomes a failure. Patent activity in this set spans wet separation and filtration hardware, water and wastewater treatment claims, metal extraction tie-ins, and hydraulic engineering directed at freeboard management and closure design.
The 50 records in scope run from 2015 through the middle of 2026, though the most recent one to two years understate real filing activity because publication typically lags filing by around 18 months.
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Filing trend and technology mix
The numbers below are drawn directly from the 50 records in scope and the 7-company assignee ranking; they set up the leader and white-space discussion that follows.
Growth after a 2020 peak
Filings peaked at 25 in 2020, the high point across the coverage window. Volume dipped afterward but resumed climbing over the following complete years: 2021's 4 filings rose to 5 by 2024, a 25% increase across that span. 2025 and 2026 figures are not yet complete because of publication lag and should not be read as a slowdown.
Water treatment and wet separation lead
C02F (water and wastewater treatment) appears in 50.0% of the 50 records and B03B (wet separation of solids) in 40.0%, making dewatering and slurry-handling hardware the densest claim territory. B01D filtration and B09B solid waste disposal each sit at 28.0%, C22B metal extraction and E02B hydraulic engineering each at 26.0%, while B65F refuse handling and E02D foundations trail at just 4.0% apiece — because a record can carry multiple classes, these shares add up to more than 100%.
Shares are the percentage of the 50 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
Go deeper on Tailings Dam Design and Monitoring with Eureka
This page is one run against one query. Ask Eureka your own question about tailings dam design and monitoring and every answer comes back with the patent numbers behind it.
Try EurekaRepresentative and most-cited filings
Tailings storage facility method and structure — US20250243640A1
The filing describes a tailings storage facility structure built around a network of sand channel arteries and permeable capillaries running through the tailings mass. The arteries run continuous in the vertical and one lateral dimension and connect to decant points; the capillaries connect at their lowest point to an artery and carry water out of the tailings into that artery network for removal.Abstract trimmed for length; full claim language is available in the source record.
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | US20200283324A1 | Tailings deposition | 15 |
| 2 | US20150086277A1 | Method and apparatus for volume reduction of fine particulate | 6 |
| 3 | US20140246385A1 | Enhanced dewatering of slurries | 5 |
| 4 | WO2021090220A2 | Heap leach structure | 3 |
| 5 | WO2020183309A2 | Tailings deposition | 2 |
| 6 | CN113874531A | 尾矿沉积 | 2 |
| 7 | CA2742041A1 | Enhanced dewatering of slurries | 2 |
| 8 | WO2023203525A1 | Tailings storage facility method and structure | 1 |
Citation counts favour older filings simply because they have had more time to be cited; treat them as a signal of influence within this corpus, not of which claims matter most today.
Patent titles are shown in the language they were filed in, not translated, so that each record stays verifiable against the original filing — a translated title will not match in Eureka or in any national register. Publication numbers are shown where the record carries one (8 of 8 rows); clicking a row searches Eureka by that number.
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Three patterns stand out once the technology composition and the assignee ranking are read together.
One filer, then a steep drop
The leading assignee holds 37 of the records in the ranking while fifth place holds just 2. That gap means most of the claim space around internal drainage and dewatering structures has effectively been staked by a single organisation and its close collaborators, not contested across many independent filers.
Growth resumed after the 2020 peak
Filings hit their high point in 2020 at 25, fell back, then climbed again from 4 in 2021 to 5 in 2024 — a 25% increase across that span. Read the 2025-2026 numbers with caution given publication lag rather than as evidence of a cooling trend.
Water handling is the densest ground
Water and wastewater treatment (C02F) and wet separation of solids (B03B) between them touch the majority of records, meaning new dewatering or clarification hardware is likely to run into prior art. Foundations (E02D) and refuse handling (B65F) sit at only 4.0% each, suggesting comparatively open ground around structural foundation elements and bulk handling logistics.
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to tailings dam design and monitoring, with the prior art for and against each one.
| Assignee | Co-assignee | Shared families |
|---|---|---|
| Anglo American Operations (South Africa) Proprietary Limited | BEHARIE TERTIA | 4 |
| Anglo American Operations (South Africa) Proprietary Limited | Anglo American Services (UK) Ltd. | 2 |
| Anglo American Operations (South Africa) Proprietary Limited | PIENAAR DANIE | 2 |
| Anglo American Services (UK) Ltd. | BEHARIE TERTIA | 2 |
Four co-assignee pairs appear in the data, and the strongest pairing links the leading South African-registered assignee with an individual co-inventor at a count of 4 — consistent with in-house R&D credited jointly to a corporate entity and named engineers rather than cross-company joint ventures.
Who holds the claim space
The ranking covers 7 companies returned by the data endpoint for this search — it is not a top-50 or top-100 list, and most of the field sits well below the leader.
A single dominant filer
One assignee accounts for the large majority of ranked records, built around internal drainage networks, decant-point engineering and related dewatering structures for tailings facilities. Its filing pattern, paired with named individual co-inventors, points to a sustained internal R&D programme rather than opportunistic single filings.
A steep drop after the leader
Fifth place in the ranking holds only 2 records, and the remaining named entities sit at similarly low counts. That pattern is typical of a field where one operator's internal engineering group files routinely while everyone else files occasionally, often around a specific site or project.
No fresh activity yet visible
None of the 7 ranked assignees show filings in the latest year of the dataset, which is expected given the roughly 18-month lag between filing and publication rather than a sign the field has gone quiet.
| Assignee | Recent year | YoY |
|---|---|---|
| Anglo American Operations (South Africa) Proprietary Limited | 0 | — |
| Anglo American Services (UK) Ltd. | 0 | — |
| BEHARIE TERTIA | 0 | — |
| Anglo American Technical & Sustainability Services Ltd. | 0 | — |
| RESIDUE SOLUTIONS | 0 | — |
| PIENAAR DANIE | 0 | — |
| HODGE WILLIAM E | 0 | — |
Where to take this analysis
The dataset points to a concentrated core and several thin branches. The next steps depend on whether the goal is freedom-to-operate or identifying open filing ground.
Map claims against the leader's portfolio
Before filing near internal drainage, decant-point or capillary dewatering structures, check claim scope against the leading assignee's filings directly rather than relying on class-level counts.
Explore in EurekaTest the under-claimed branches
Foundation-integrated drainage and closure-phase instrumentation retrofits show thin coverage in this dataset; a targeted prior-art search in Eureka can confirm whether that gap holds once full claim text is checked.
Run a gap search in EurekaCommon questions on tailings dam patents
One assignee holds 37 of the records in the 7-company ranking returned for this search, far ahead of the fifth-place count of 2. That filer's portfolio centres on internal drainage networks and decant-point engineering for tailings storage facilities. The rest of the ranking is a long tail of much smaller filers, so freedom-to-operate work should focus first on the leader's specific claims rather than assuming the field is evenly contested.
Filings peaked in 2020 at 25 in this dataset, then fell back before climbing again from 4 in 2021 to 5 in 2024, a 25% rise over that span. Figures for 2025 and 2026 are still incomplete because patent publication typically lags actual filing by about 18 months, so those years should not yet be read as a decline. The honest read is renewed growth through the last complete year on record, not a peak already passed.
Water and wastewater treatment (C02F) appears in 50.0% of the 50 records in scope and wet separation of solids (B03B) in 40.0%, making these the two densest technology classes. Filtration (B01D) and solid waste disposal (B09B) each sit at 28.0%, with metal extraction (C22B) and hydraulic engineering (E02B) at 26.0%. Because a single record can carry several IPC classes, these shares add up to more than 100% of the record total.
US20250243640A1 describes a tailings storage facility built around sand channel arteries and permeable capillaries that carry water out of the tailings mass to decant points. It is assigned to Anglo American Technical & Sustainability Services and published on 2025-07-31. Anyone designing an internal drainage or capillary-based dewatering network for a tailings facility should review its claim boundaries closely before finalising a similar structure, since it sits squarely inside the leader's core claim territory.
Foundation-related claims (E02D) and refuse-handling claims (B65F) each cover only 4.0% of the 50 records in scope, well below the 50.0% and 40.0% shares held by water treatment and wet separation. That gap suggests foundation-integrated drainage elements and closure-phase instrumentation retrofits are comparatively under-claimed relative to the crowded dewatering and separation space. A first claim in those areas would need to be checked against the leader's broader portfolio, but the raw class-level density is much lower.
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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.