Trivalent Chromium Electrolyte Patents: Leaders & White Space 2026
Trivalent chromium electrolyte patents: who holds the bath chemistry claims and where the field is still open
One assignee leads the ranked field with 11 records, well ahead of a fifth-place company at 5 and a tenth-place company at 2 — a leader with a long tail behind it. Filings rose to a peak of 5 in 2021, then fell to 0 by 2024 — a -100% swing over that three-year span. That decline is measured on complete years only; 2025 and 2026 figures are still incomplete because publication typically lags filing by around 18 months, so no conclusion should be drawn yet about whether activity is genuinely tapering.
- 1麦克德米德尖端有限公司11
- 2OMI国际公司10
- 3ENTHONE GMBH9
- 4塔塔钢铁荷兰科技有限责任公司6
- 5麦克德米德乐思有限责任公司5
See the full trivalent chromium electrolyte chemistry 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 on trivalent chromium electrolyte patents
Who holds the most patents on trivalent chromium electrolyte chemistry?
Within the ranked set of 10 companies in this dataset, one assignee leads with 11 records, well ahead of the fifth-place company at 5 and the tenth-place company at 2. That gap indicates a sustained filing programme rather than a single patent family, likely built around bath chemistry and color-control claims. Newer entrants and individual inventors hold smaller, narrower positions further down the ranking.
Is trivalent chromium plating patent activity growing or shrinking?
Filings peaked at 5 in 2021 and fell to 0 by 2024, a documented -100% change over that three-year span. However, 2025 and 2026 figures are still incomplete because patent publication typically lags actual filing by around 18 months, so this should not be read as current inactivity. A fair reassessment of momentum needs another year or two of publications to clear the lag.
What does US9758884B2 actually cover?
US9758884B2, assigned to MacDermid Acumen, Inc. and published in 2017, claims a method for adjusting and controlling the color of trivalent chromium deposits by measuring a color standard, adding color-enhancing additives to the electrolyte, depositing chromium, and iteratively comparing and adjusting the additive dose against that standard. It is a process patent centred on color matching rather than the base electrolyte formulation itself. Anyone building a color-control step into a trivalent chromium plating line should review its claim scope before finalising an additive-dosing method that follows the same measure-adjust-compare loop.
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 Trivalent Chromium Electrolyte Chemistry 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.