Thermoplastic Composite Aerostructures Patents: Leaders & White Space 2026
- Concentrated at the top. The top 5 assignees hold 191 of 389 records in scope (49.1%), and the top 10 hold 269 (69.2%) — this field is not a wide-open field of small filers.
- Filing has cooled from its 2019 peak. Annual filings peaked at 64 in 2019; by the last complete year, 2021's 16 filings had fallen to 15 in 2024, a -6% move over that span.
- Shaping and joining dominate the claim map. B29C (shaping of plastics) touches 56.3% of records and B32B (laminates) 26.5%, while welding-specific class B23K sits at just 5.9% — a narrower, more contestable slice.
Filing growth compares 2021 (16 records) with 2024 (15) — 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 389 records in scope (CR5), not by the ranked leaders only.
What this patent set actually covers
This landscape tracks patent activity at the intersection of thermoplastic composite materials — PEEK composite, thermoplastic laminate and thermoplastic prepreg — and the joining and consolidation processes that turn them into structural parts: consolidation temperature control, fusion bonding, in situ consolidation, crystallinity control, resistance welding and induction welding. It sits at the boundary of materials chemistry and manufacturing process claims, which is why shaping (B29C) and layered-product (B32B) classes carry the bulk of the filings.
389 records are in scope, spanning 2015 through the 2026 cut-off. Publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, so the most recent one to two years understate real filing activity and should be read as provisional rather than declining.
Filing trend and technology composition
Two views of the same 389 records: how filing volume has moved year over year, and which IPC subclasses the claims actually sit in. Because a single record can carry several IPC classes, the composition shares add up to more than 100% — read each one against the 389-record total, not against each other.
Filing trend, 2017–2024
Filings rose to a peak of 64 in 2019, then eased; the most recent complete comparison — 16 filings in 2021 against 15 in 2024 — is a -6% move, not a collapse. Treat 2025 and later years as still filling in.
Technology composition by IPC subclass
B29C (shaping of plastics) and B32B (layered products) carry more than half and roughly a quarter of records respectively, confirming this is primarily a process-and-material-form field. B23K (welding, soldering & brazing) at 5.9% and B29B (plastics preparation) at 6.4% are the narrowest slices among the major classes — smaller claim territories, and correspondingly easier to map precisely.
Shares are the percentage of the 389 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
Go deeper on Thermoplastic Composite Aerostructures with Eureka
This page is one run against one query. Ask Eureka your own question about thermoplastic composite aerostructures and every answer comes back with the patent numbers behind it.
Try EurekaThe records other filings build on
Laminate structures comprising fiber-reinforced thermoplastic prepreg plies (US20180162102A1)
A laminate structure may include an aluminum layer, a glass composite layer adjacent to the aluminum layer, and a carbon composite layer adjacent to the glass composite layer, opposite the aluminum layer. The glass composite layer may include one or more glass-fiber-reinforced thermoplastic prepreg plies, and the carbon composite layer may include one or more carbon-fiber-reinforced thermoplastic prepreg plies — a hybrid metal/glass/carbon stack rather than an all-composite one.Filed by The Boeing Company, published 2018-06-14.
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | US5094883A | Flexible multiply towpreg and method of production therefor | 150 |
| 2 | US5198281A | Non-woven flexible multiply towpreg fabric | 122 |
| 3 | US5902935A | Nondestructive evaluation of composite bonds, especially thermoplastic induction welds | 106 |
| 4 | WO1992020521A1 | Flexible multiply towpreg, products therefrom and method of production therefor | 97 |
| 5 | US5919413A | Method for inserting Z-pins | 96 |
| 6 | WO2004028731A1 | Workpiece structure modification | 81 |
| 7 | US20170340932A1 | Mixed material golf club head | 79 |
| 8 | US6039832A | Thermoplastic titanium honeycomb panel | 74 |
| 9 | US9925432B2 | Mixed material golf club head | 70 |
| 10 | US5378543A | Thermoplastic elastomer laminates and glass run channels molded therefrom | 70 |
Citation counts favour older records simply because they have had more time to accumulate citations within this corpus — treat them as a signal of influence on the field's vocabulary, not as a ranking of current commercial importance.
Each row carries its publication number; clicking a row searches Eureka by that number.
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The concentration and citation data point to a field where the foundational fibre-form and joining-inspection patents are decades old, while the current claim activity has moved into process control and hybrid layups.
A short list of assignees sets the terms
With the top 5 holding 191 of 389 records and the top 10 holding 269, a new entrant is filing into ground the leaders already occupy in shaping and laminate-structure claims. That does not close the field — it means differentiation has to come from a narrower process or material combination than a broad laminate-structure claim.
Volume has come off its 2019 peak, not fallen off a cliff
The 2021-to-2024 comparison shows a -6% move, a modest pullback rather than a retreat. Given the 18-month publication lag, 2025-onward figures will fill in and likely narrow that gap further.
Joining-specific claims are the thinnest major class
B29C and B32B carry the bulk of filings, but B23K — the class most directly tied to resistance and induction welding as a joining method rather than a shaping step — sits at just 5.9% of records. That is the narrowest of the major classes tracked here and the one with the most room for a tightly drawn process claim.
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to thermoplastic composite aerostructures, with the prior art for and against each one.
| Assignee | Co-assignee | Shared families |
|---|---|---|
| Cytec Industries Inc. | Solvay Specialty Polymers USA, LLC | 8 |
| Airbus Operations GmbH | Airbus SAS (France) | 2 |
| Cytec Industries Inc. | Solvay Specialty Polymers USA, LLC | 1 |
| Cytec Technology Corp. | ROGERS SCOTT A | 1 |
| Cytec Technology Corp. | PRATTE JAMES F | 1 |
| Cytec Technology Corp. | PONSOLLE DOMINIQUE | 1 |
| The Welding Institute | KELLAR EWEN JAMES CRAWFORD | 1 |
| The Welding Institute | DANCE BRUCE GUY IRVINE | 1 |
Only 8 co-assignee pairs appear across the dataset, and the strongest pair by far is a single materials-supplier tie-up — most filers in this field prosecute alone rather than through joint ventures.
The assignee landscape
The ranking covers 65 companies across the 389 records in scope. Filing is led by an aerospace OEM, with materials suppliers, a defence prime, a research institute and a specialist welding house filling out the ranked leaders — no single co-filing cluster dominates the field.
One filer sets the pace, by a wide margin
The leading assignee's 64 records outpace the fifth-ranked company's 18 by more than 3x, which suggests the leader's process and materials claims form a baseline the rest of the field is filing around rather than through.
A tight cluster behind the leader
Between fifth and tenth place the gap narrows to a handful of records, showing a genuine mid-tier of active filers rather than a sharp drop-off after the top few names.
Joint filings are the exception
The strongest co-assignee relationship links a legacy materials company to its successor entity under the same corporate lineage; beyond that, co-filing activity thins out quickly, and most of the ranked leaders file solo.
| Assignee | Recent year | YoY |
|---|---|---|
| The Boeing Company | 0 | — |
| Karsten Manufacturing Corporation | 0 | -100% |
| Cytec Industries Inc. | 0 | — |
| Cytec Technology Corp. | 0 | — |
| Raytheon Company | 0 | — |
| Kok & Van Engelen Composite Structures | 0 | — |
| Airbus Operations GmbH | 0 | — |
| The Welding Institute | 0 | — |
Where to take this from here
The dataset points to specific next steps depending on whether the goal is freedom-to-operate, a filing strategy, or tracking a competitor.
Map claims against the leader's portfolio
With one assignee holding 64 records against a fifth-place count of 18, a freedom-to-operate check should start by pulling that leader's full claim set in B29C and B32B before drafting around it.
Explore assignee claims in EurekaTest a claim in the under-claimed branches
Induction-weld inspection and crystallinity-gradient control sit outside the densest classes; a first claim drafted there has more room than one filed straight into B29C's shaping-process core.
Run a white-space search in EurekaWatch the 2025–2026 filings as they publish
Because publication lags filing by about 18 months, the real trend for 2025 and 2026 is still arriving. Set a monitoring watch rather than concluding the field is slowing from the raw counts alone.
Set up a filing monitor in EurekaCommon questions on this landscape
One assignee leads the ranked field with 64 records, well ahead of the fifth-place company's 18. The top 5 assignees together hold 191 of the 389 records in scope, 49.1%, and the top 10 hold 269, 69.2%. That is a concentrated field: a small number of companies, spanning an aerospace OEM, specialist materials suppliers and a defence prime, account for most of the documented filing activity, and any new filer should expect to be drafting around their existing claims rather than into open space.
Filing peaked at 64 records in 2019 and has since eased; comparing the two most recent complete years, 2021's 16 filings fell to 15 in 2024, a -6% move. That is a modest pullback rather than a collapse, and it should not be read as the technology losing relevance. Because publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, the 2025 and 2026 figures in any chart are still incomplete and will rise as more records publish.
The search scope combines thermoplastic material forms — PEEK composite, thermoplastic laminate, thermoplastic prepreg — with the processes used to consolidate and join them: consolidation temperature control, fusion bonding, in situ consolidation, crystallinity control, resistance welding and induction welding. In IPC terms that shows up as heavy weighting toward B29C (shaping of plastics, 56.3% of records) and B32B (layered products, 26.5%), with welding-specific claims under B23K a much narrower 5.9% of records.
The joining-specific class B23K carries only 5.9% of the 389 records, the thinnest of the major classes tracked, which points to under-claimed ground in weld quality inspection and joint design rather than in the shaping and laminate-structure claims that dominate B29C and B32B. Crystallinity-gradient control during in situ consolidation and hybrid metal-thermoplastic layup stacks — as seen in Boeing's US20180162102A1 — are two specific sub-areas with comparatively few dedicated filings. A first claim drafted in these branches has more open room than one filed into the dense shaping-process core.
US20180162102A1, filed by The Boeing Company and published 2018-06-14, claims a laminate structure combining an aluminum layer with adjacent glass-fiber-reinforced and carbon-fiber-reinforced thermoplastic prepreg composite layers — a hybrid metal/glass/carbon stack rather than an all-composite laminate. It does not block all-composite thermoplastic laminates or joining processes outright; its reach is specific to that hybrid layer arrangement and sequence. Anyone designing a similar hybrid stack should review its full claim set closely, but an all-thermoplastic or all-carbon laminate, or a process-only claim around welding or consolidation, sits outside what this record covers.
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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.