Thermomechanical Controlled Processing Patents: Top Filers & Trends 2026
- 53.0% concentration. The top 5 assignees hold 1,153 of 2,174 records in scope — more than half the field sits with a handful of steelmakers.
- Filings peaked in 2022 at 118. Growth from 2021 to 2024 fell 32% (74 → 50), though 2025-26 counts are still filling in as publications lag filing.
- C22C and C21D dominate. 83.8% of records touch alloy composition and 78.8% touch heat treatment — rolling process claims (B21B, 18.1%) are comparatively thin.
Filing growth compares 2021 (74 records) with 2024 (50) — 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 2,174 records in scope (CR5), not by the ranked leaders only.
What thermomechanical controlled processing patents cover
Thermomechanical controlled processing (TMCP) links rolling schedule, cooling path and alloy design into a single control problem: austenite conditioning during finish rolling, coiling temperature and accelerated cooling rate after the mill, all tuned to hit a target property set without added alloy cost. The search set spans 2,174 published records from 2015 through the July 2026 cut-off, drawn from filings that combine controlled rolling or grain-refinement language with process variables like finish rolling temperature, coiling temperature or property prediction.
Because a single record can carry claims across composition, heat treatment and rolling equipment, the technology composition figures below add up to well over 100% of the record total — that overlap is itself informative: it shows how tightly alloy chemistry and process control are co-claimed in this field.
Filing trend and technology composition
Annual filing counts and IPC subclass coverage across the 2,174 records in scope, plus where applicants are choosing to seek protection.
A 2022 peak, then a measured pullback
Filings ran from 81 in 2017 to a peak of 118 in 2022. The 2021-to-2024 window shows a 32% decline (74 to 50) — a real signal, but 2025 and 2026 counts (down to 5 in the partial final year) are not comparable yet because publication typically lags filing by around 18 months.
Alloy and heat-treatment claims dominate; rolling equipment claims are thinner
C22C (alloys) and C21D (heat treatment) each cover the large majority of records — 83.8% and 78.8% of the 2,174 in scope respectively — confirming that most applicants claim TMCP through composition and thermal path rather than mill hardware. B21B (metal rolling) sits at 18.1%, and casting, welding, extrusion and laminate classes each register under 6%.
Shares are the percentage of the 2,174 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
Go deeper on Thermomechanical Controlled Processing with Eureka
This page is one run against one query. Ask Eureka your own question about thermomechanical controlled processing and every answer comes back with the patent numbers behind it.
Try EurekaA representative claim construction in this space
Hot Rolled Precipitation Strengthened and Grain Refined High Strength Dual Phase Steel Sheet (Tata Steel)
A process for producing dual phase steel sheet: casting a liquid steel composition into a slab, hot rolling at a finish rolling temperature of 840±30°C, cooling on the run-out table at 40-70°C/s to an intermediate temperature band, then a natural cooling pause of 5-7 seconds before further rapid cooling — targeting a minimum 600 MPa tensile strength dual phase microstructure.Composition, finish rolling temperature and a two-stage cooling schedule are claimed together as a single dependent process.
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | US5454883A | High toughness low yield ratio, high fatigue strength steel plate and process of producing same | 169 |
| 2 | US5545269A | Method for producing ultra high strength, secondary hardening steels with superior toughness and weldability | 146 |
| 3 | US5755895A | High strength line pipe steel having low yield ratio and excellent in low temperature toughness | 126 |
| 4 | US6315946B1 | Ultra low carbon bainitic weathering steel | 116 |
| 5 | US4466842A | Ferritic steel having ultra-fine grains and a method for producing the same | 114 |
| 6 | US5080727A | Metallic material having ultra-fine grain structure and method for its manufacture | 109 |
| 7 | US5545270A | Method of producing high strength dual phase steel plate with superior toughness and weldability | 107 |
| 8 | US5531842A | Method of preparing a high strength dual phase steel plate with superior toughness and weldability (LAW219) | 101 |
| 9 | JP1983123823A | Manufacture of high strength hot rolled steel sheet of super fine grain | 99 |
| 10 | WO1999005335A1 | Ultra-high strength, weldable steels with excellent ultra-low temperature toughness | 92 |
Citation counts favour older filings within a searched corpus; treat them as a signal of influence on later work, not as a ranking of current commercial importance.
Each row carries its publication number; clicking a row searches Eureka by that number.
Put your own technology through the same analysis
Eureka on the web
When you want the answer in the next five minutes.
The agent works the prompt against patents and technical literature, citing every source.
Run your analysis now →MCP server & REST API
When it has to run inside your own pipeline.
Patent search, landscape analysis and assignee resolution as MCP tools. Drop them into any agent framework, or call REST directly.
Browse MCP servers →What the numbers mean for a filing decision
Three patterns recur across the dataset and each has a direct bearing on where new claims are likely to survive prosecution.
The top of the field is dense, not diffuse
Just five assignees account for over half of all records in scope, with the leader alone holding 313. A tenth-place assignee still holds 41 — the drop-off from leader to the ranked group is steep, meaning freedom-to-operate searches need to start with the concentrated top rather than assume a fragmented field.
Volume has eased off its 2022 peak
Filings hit 118 in 2022 before easing to 50 by 2024, a documented 32% decline over that window. This reads as a genuine cooling of new filing activity in the mature core of the technology, not as a data artefact — but the very latest years are still incomplete and should not be read as continuing the decline.
Composition and heat treatment are the crowded lanes
The overwhelming majority of records claim alloy composition (C22C) or heat treatment (C21D), often the same record claiming both. Rolling equipment claims (B21B, 18.1%) and casting (B22D, 4.1%) are comparatively open, suggesting mill-side process control is less exhaustively claimed than the metallurgy itself.
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to thermomechanical controlled processing, with the prior art for and against each one.
Who holds the ranked filing positions
The ranked assignee list covers 100 companies, counted in patent families. It is not a curated top-10 or top-50 — it is the full set the underlying data endpoint returns, and the concentration sits almost entirely in its upper tier.
One assignee holds nearly triple the fifth-place count
The leading assignee's 313 records compare to 103 at fifth place and 41 at tenth — a steep gradient that points to a small set of integrated steelmakers setting the pace on grain-refinement and coiling-temperature claims.
Joint filing is rare but concentrated where it exists
Only ten co-assignee pairs are recorded, and the strongest links pair a major integrated producer with an upstream research partner, or pair a steelmaker with its own research institute affiliate — a pattern of internal R&D-to-production filing rather than cross-company alliance.
Momentum has shifted away from the historic leaders
Several of the assignees with the largest historic counts show zero filings in the latest year, while one mid-tier assignee posted a +100% year-on-year increase off a low base. Momentum data at this stage of the cycle should be read cautiously given publication lag, but it flags which filers are still active versus coasting on older grants.
| Assignee | Recent year | YoY |
|---|---|---|
| Pohang Iron & Steel Co., Ltd. (POSCO) | 2 | +100% |
| Baoshan Iron & Steel Co., Ltd. (Baosteel) | 1 | -75% |
| Nippon Steel Corporation | 0 | — |
| JFE Steel Corporation | 0 | -100% |
| ExxonMobil Upstream Research Company | 0 | — |
| NIPPON STEEL & SUMITOMO METAL CORP | 0 | — |
| Sumitomo Metal Industries, Ltd. | 0 | — |
| Kawasaki Steel Corporation | 0 | — |
Where to take this analysis
The dataset points to a field with a dense claimed core and several thinner branches. The next step is usually to test a specific process variable or a specific competitor against the full claim set.
Run a freedom-to-operate check on a target cooling schedule
Take a specific finish rolling temperature and cooling-rate combination and check it against the concentrated top assignees' claim scope before committing tooling changes.
Search this claim space in EurekaTrack momentum, not just historic volume
Historic leaders showing zero recent filings may be shifting effort elsewhere; monitor recent-year activity rather than relying on cumulative counts alone.
Set up assignee monitoring in EurekaProbe the under-claimed rolling-hardware branch
With B21B claims at 18.1% against 83.8% for alloy composition, mill-side process control claims may leave more room to file than the metallurgy does.
Explore white space in EurekaCommon questions on thermomechanical controlled processing patents
TMCP claims typically combine an alloy composition window with a specific rolling and cooling schedule — finish rolling temperature, coiling temperature and accelerated cooling rate are the recurring variables. In this dataset, 83.8% of the 2,174 records in scope touch alloy composition (C22C) and 78.8% touch heat treatment (C21D), often in the same claim set, which shows applicants usually protect the metallurgy and the process path together rather than either alone. Rolling equipment claims are comparatively less common at 18.1%, so a novel mill-side control method may face a less crowded field than a novel steel chemistry.
Filing is concentrated: the top 5 assignees together hold 53.0% of the 2,174 records in scope, and the leading assignee alone holds 313 records against 41 at tenth place. This is a field dominated by integrated steelmakers with in-house metallurgy research rather than a fragmented mix of small filers. Anyone doing a freedom-to-operate check should prioritise searching the concentrated top of the ranked assignee list before assuming the field is open.
Filings peaked at 118 in 2022 and the documented three-year window shows a 32% decline from 74 in 2021 to 50 in 2024 — a genuine slowdown in the mature core of the technology. However, counts for 2025 and 2026 are still incomplete because publication typically lags actual filing by around 18 months, so the very latest years should not be read as continuing that decline. The honest read is: activity cooled through 2024, and the trend beyond that is not yet determinable from published data.
The classes with the lowest filing density relative to the alloy-and-heat-treatment core are metal rolling equipment (B21B, 18.1% of records), casting integration (B22D, 4.1%), welding and brazing of TMCP-processed plate (B23K, 2.7%), extrusion and drawing integration (B21C, 2.7%) and layered or clad products (B32B, 2.5%). These lower shares indicate less claim density, not necessarily less commercial relevance, and are worth a closer look before assuming any adjacent branch is fully occupied.
Citation counts in a searched corpus systematically favour older filings simply because they have had more time to be cited, so the most-cited records in this dataset date from the 1980s and 1990s. They are a reasonable signal of technical influence on later filings but a poor signal of current commercial importance. A newer record with few citations may still be more relevant to an active FTO question than an older, heavily-cited one.
Research Thermomechanical Controlled Processing in depth with Eureka
Go past this page: query the whole thermomechanical controlled processing corpus yourself, in your own scope.
Every answer comes back with patent numbers you can open.
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.