Thermoforming Patents: Who Leads, Where the Gaps Are 2026
- Filing has cooled since 2020. the peak year at 31 records, down to single digits by the most recent full year, with the 2026 count still partial.
- No single assignee dominates. the leader holds 19 of 648 records and the top 5 combined account for only 13.6% of all records in scope.
- Shaping claims (B29C) cover 96.3% of records. leaving layered products, polymer composition and container-specific claims comparatively thin by comparison.
What the thermoforming patent record shows
Thermoforming — sheet heating, vacuum and pressure forming, plug assist, and the trim and thinning control that follows — is a mature plastics-processing discipline, and the patent record reflects that maturity. Across 648 records filed between 2015 and the 2026 cut-off, filing activity rose to a peak in 2020 and has since declined, a pattern more consistent with a settled technology than an emerging one. The claim space is not concentrated in the hands of one or two firms: the leader holds 19 records, and even the top 10 assignees combined reach only 24.5% of all 648 records in scope.
That combination — flat-to-declining filing and a long tail of assignees rather than a dominant one — points to a field where core forming mechanics are largely staked out, but where adjacent claims around materials, layered constructions and specific container geometries remain more open. Recency is understated in the trend line: publication typically lags filing by around 18 months, so the last one to two years will fill in as records publish.
Filing trend and technology composition
Two views of the same 648-record dataset: how filing has moved year over year, and which IPC subclasses the records sit in.
A declining trend after a 2020 peak
Filings ran at 8 in 2017, climbed to a peak of 31 in 2020, and had fallen to a midpoint of 5 by 2022. The 2026 figure of 2 is a partial year and should not be read as a collapse in activity — it reflects the filing-to-publication lag rather than a sudden stop.
Shaping claims dominate; downstream classes are thinner
B29C (shaping of plastics) appears in 96.3% of the 648 records, confirming that most filings are anchored in core forming method claims. B65D (containers and packaging) and B32B (layered products) sit well below that at 19.1% and 17.1% respectively, and C08J/C08L polymer-processing and composition classes cover 14.0% and 13.0% — smaller footprints that suggest less-crowded claim territory around materials and finished-article geometry.
Shares are the percentage of the 648 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
Go deeper on Thermoforming Processes with Eureka
This page is one run against one query. Ask Eureka your own question about thermoforming processes and every answer comes back with the patent numbers behind it.
Try EurekaThe most-cited prior art in this dataset
US9238325B2 — Thermoforming machine, plug assist drive assembly and method
A plug assist drive assembly for a thermoforming press, built around a drive platen and plug assist platen connected by paired elongated gear racks and a drive gear/driven gear arrangement driven from a single drive source, coordinating plug assist travel with sheet forming motion.Filed by Irwin Research and Development, Inc., published 2016-01-19.
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | US5533311A | Thermoformed plastic refrigerator door | 128 |
| 2 | US5869412A | Metal fibermat/polymer composite | 122 |
| 3 | US5716581A | Method of thermoforming a plastic refrigerator door | 113 |
| 4 | US5391251A | Method of forming a pallet | 106 |
| 5 | US4981631A | Process for making lightweight polyester articles | 92 |
| 6 | US7246714B2 | Single point hinge for a container | 89 |
| 7 | US5507999A | Process for thermoforming plastic doors | 87 |
| 8 | US4878826A | Apparatus for thermoforming plastic materials | 87 |
| 9 | US20050161865A1 | Methods of forming a layered article | 85 |
| 10 | US5362436A | Polystyrene foam sheet useful for forming deep drawn articles, a process to produce those articles, and the d… | 80 |
Citation counts inside this corpus skew toward older filings and are a signal of influence on later filers, not of current commercial relevance.
Each row carries its publication number; clicking a row searches Eureka by that number.
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Three read-throughs from the concentration, trend and citation data.
No single assignee controls the field
The leading assignee holds 19 records and the top 5 combined reach only 13.6% of the 648 records in scope. That is a fragmented ownership pattern rather than a blocking position held by one or two firms, which changes freedom-to-operate work from clearance-around-a-leader to a broader landscape check across many smaller holders.
Filing has cooled since its 2020 peak
Activity rose from 8 records in 2017 to a peak of 31 in 2020, then fell back toward single digits by 2022. That trajectory is more consistent with a technology whose core mechanics are settled than one still being actively staked out, though the most recent one to two years are understated by publication lag.
Shaping claims are dense; materials claims are not
B29C shaping-of-plastics claims sit in 96.3% of the 648 records, while layered-product claims (B32B, 17.1%) and polymer composition claims (C08L, 13.0%) are comparatively sparse. That gap is where materials-and-construction claims are more likely to find open space than a new forming-method claim.
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to thermoforming processes, with the prior art for and against each one.
| Assignee | Co-assignee | Shared families |
|---|---|---|
| Idemitsu Petrochemical Co., Ltd. | Matsuzawa Seisakusho Co., Ltd. | 1 |
| Idemitsu Petrochemical Co., Ltd. | MATSUZAWA SEISAKUSHO | 1 |
Only 2 co-assignee pairs appear across the 648 records, suggesting most filings here are solo efforts rather than joint development programmes.
Assignee landscape: a leader without a dominant position
The 100-company ranking returned by the dataset shows a leader with 19 records, a fifth-place holder at 17, and a tenth-place holder at 13 — a gentle taper rather than a cliff, and one consistent with a technology where many firms hold small, defensible positions rather than one holding the field.
The top filer is not a runaway leader
With 19 of 648 records, the leading assignee's share is modest in absolute terms. Combined with a top-5 share of only 13.6%, this points to a field where competitive monitoring needs to cover a wide set of filers rather than one or two dominant players.
A broad middle tier, not a sharp drop-off
The top 10 assignees together hold 159 records, 24.5% of the 648 in scope — meaning three-quarters of the record set sits outside even a generously drawn top 10. New entrants are filing into genuinely open ground, not just around the edges of a handful of incumbents.
Filings are largely solo efforts
Only 2 co-assignee pairs turn up across the dataset. Joint-development or joint-filing strategy is rare here, which is worth noting for anyone benchmarking partnership models against this technology area.
| Assignee | Recent year | YoY |
|---|---|---|
| The Dow Chemical Company | 0 | — |
| Sekisui Plastics Co., Ltd. | 0 | — |
| Idemitsu Petrochemical Co., Ltd. | 0 | — |
| E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Co. | 0 | — |
| Nakamoto Pakkusu Co., Ltd. | 0 | — |
| DRAGULINESCU IONEL DAN | 0 | — |
| Denka Co., Ltd. | 0 | — |
| Converter Manufacturing LLC | 0 | — |
Where to take this analysis
The dataset points to specific next steps depending on whether the goal is clearance, competitive tracking, or claim drafting.
Run a freedom-to-operate check across the long tail
Because ownership is fragmented rather than concentrated at the top, a clearance search needs to reach well past the top 10 assignees to be reliable.
Explore assignees in EurekaWatch the under-claimed branches
Layered-product and polymer-composition claims sit at a fraction of the density of core shaping claims, and that gap is where new filings are more likely to find open space.
Map white space in EurekaTrack the most-cited prior art directly
The highest-citation records in this set are older refrigerator-door and lightweight-article filings; understanding what they actually claim is a faster starting point than re-deriving the field from scratch.
Read the cited patents in EurekaCommon questions about thermoforming patents
The dataset ranks 100 assignees by record count, and the leading holder accounts for 19 of the 648 records in scope. No single company controls the field: the top 5 assignees combined hold only 13.6% of all records, and the top 10 combined reach 24.5%. That means competitive tracking in this space needs to cover a broad set of mid-sized filers rather than a handful of dominant players.
Filing activity peaked in 2020 at 31 records and has declined since, sitting at a midpoint of 5 by 2022. The 2026 figure is partial because the dataset cut-off is mid-year and publication typically lags filing by around 18 months, so recent years will fill in somewhat as more records publish. On balance, the pattern looks like a maturing field rather than one in an active filing surge.
The overwhelming majority of records, 96.3% of the 648 in scope, carry a B29C classification covering shaping of plastics, which is the core forming-method claim territory. Container and packaging claims (B65D) appear in 19.1% of records, layered-product claims (B32B) in 17.1%, and polymer composition claims (C08L) in 13.0%. Because a single record can carry multiple IPC classes, these shares add up to more than 100%, and they show that materials and layered-construction claims are comparatively less crowded than forming-method claims.
The clearest signal is the gap between the 96.3% density of core B29C shaping claims and the much lower density of adjacent classes: 17.1% for layered products, 14.0% for polymer processing, and 13.0% for polymer composition. That gap suggests claim space around materials selection, layered-sheet constructions, and container-specific geometry is less occupied than the core forming mechanics themselves. It is a starting hypothesis for drafting, not a guarantee of allowability, and should be checked against the specific sub-claims in the nearest prior art.
US9238325B2, filed by Irwin Research and Development, covers a specific plug assist drive assembly built around paired gear racks, a drive gear and driven gear, and a single drive source coordinating plug assist and platen motion. It blocks that particular mechanical arrangement for synchronising plug assist travel, not plug assist forming in general. Alternative drive mechanisms, such as independently actuated plug assist axes or non-geared linear drives, would sit outside its specific claim language, though a formal freedom-to-operate opinion would need to check the full claim set rather than the abstract alone.
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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.
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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.