Tritium Breeding Blankets Patents: Top Filers & Trends 2026
Tritium Breeding Blankets: Patents, Leading Filers and Filing Trends
60.5% of all 119 records sit with just five assignees — the top 10 combined account for 82.4%, so this is a field with a short list of gatekeepers, not a wide-open one. Filings rose from 2 in 2017 to a peak of 24 in 2021, then declined to 7 by 2024 — a -71% change over that three-year span. Because publication typically lags filing by around 18 months, the 2025-2026 figures are not yet complete and should not be read as a continued decline.
- 1UK ATOMIC ENERGY AUTHORITY21
- 2TOKAMAK ENERGY14
- 3MSNW LLC13
- 4LAWRENCE LIVERMORE NAT SECURITY LLC12
- 5OXFORD SIGMA LIMITED12
See the full tritium breeding blankets analysis in Eureka
- The complete ranking, not just the top five
- Every IPC branch with its share of the corpus
- The most-cited records, and where claim space is still thin
Common questions about tritium breeding blanket patents
Who holds the most patents on tritium breeding blankets?
The ranking of 27 assignees is led by a single organisation with 21 of the 119 records in scope, well ahead of the rest of the field. The top five assignees combined hold 60.5% of all records, and the top ten hold 82.4%, so the field is concentrated among a small number of national labs and fusion-energy developers rather than spread across many independent filers. Anyone doing freedom-to-operate work should start with that top group before widening the search.
Is tritium breeding blanket patent activity growing or slowing down?
Filings rose from 2 in 2017 to a peak of 24 in 2021, then fell to 7 by 2024, a -71% change over that three-year span. Publication typically lags actual filing by around 18 months, so the lower counts shown for 2025 and 2026 in most datasets are incomplete rather than a genuine collapse in activity. The fairer read is that the field had a filing surge around 2021 and has since returned to a lower, steadier baseline as of the last complete year, 2024.
What technology areas do these patents cover?
Almost all records (84.9% of 119) carry the G21B fusion-reactor classification, with smaller shares touching conversion of nuclei, general nuclear reactors, and nuclear power plants. Materials and thermal engineering classes — alloys and heat-exchange apparatus — each appear on well under 10% of records. That gap suggests the reactor-level blanket concept is well claimed while the supporting materials and thermal-management engineering is comparatively open.
Disclaimer. This analysis is based on Patsnap Eureka data drawn from a limited snapshot of global patent records and is provided for general information and reference only. Patent data carries inherent limitations — recent filings are under-counted because of publication lag, counts may be on a record or family basis, classification and applicant-name data may contain errors or duplicates, and the underlying search query defines the scope shown — so the analysis may be incomplete or inaccurate and may not reflect the full technology landscape.
Nothing here is an exhaustive prior-art, novelty, freedom-to-operate or validity search, nor does it constitute legal, financial or professional advice, and it should not be relied upon as such. Verify independently and review with qualified patent and legal professionals before acting on it.
Method: Filing trend and technology composition. Derived from a Patsnap search on Tritium Breeding Blankets covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-07-31. Counts reflect published records only and shift as new filings publish. Every share divides by all records in scope. Data: Patsnap Eureka. See the full landscape report.