Ultrasonic Testing Patents: Top Companies & Filing Trends 2026
- Concentrated but not locked up. the ranked leader holds 252 of 2,294 records, yet the top 5 combined account for only 22.3% of all records in scope — a long tail of single- and few-filing entrants fills the rest.
- Filing has cooled from its 2020 peak. activity peaked at 94 records in 2020 and fell from 79 in 2021 to 30 in 2024, a 62% drop over that span — though 2025-26 figures are still filling in under normal publication lag.
- One material-analysis class dominates the claim map. G01N covers 87.5% of all 2,294 records, while adjacent classes like acoustics (G10K, 4.4%) and welding/brazing (B23K, 2.4%) carry a fraction of the filing density.
Filing growth compares 2021 (79 records) with 2024 (30) — 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 2,294 records in scope (CR5), not by the ranked leaders only.
What this landscape covers
This landscape tracks patent families addressing ultrasonic inspection of additive-manufactured and composite parts — porosity detection, delamination, anisotropic velocity correction, surface-roughness coupling, reference standards, and both immersion and contact-probe methods. The scope spans 2,294 published records filed or published between 2015 and mid-2026, drawn from a search combining ultrasonic-inspection terminology with the specific technical claim language that separates additive/composite NDT from generic ultrasonic testing.
Because publication trails filing by roughly 18 months, the most recent one to two years in any trend chart will always look thinner than the underlying filing activity actually was. Readers should treat 2024 as the last year with a reasonably complete picture and read 2025-26 as a floor, not a ceiling.
Filing trends and technology composition
Two views of the same 2,294-record corpus: how filing volume has moved year over year, and which IPC subclasses carry the claim density today.
Filing trend, 2017-2026
Volume rose to a peak of 94 records in 2020, then declined — 79 records in 2021 down to 30 in 2024, a 62% fall over that three-year window. 2025 and 2026 are shown as reported but are not yet complete due to normal publication lag.
Technology composition by IPC subclass
G01N (material analysis and testing) appears in 87.5% of all 2,294 records, confirming that most filings are framed as general inspection/testing methods rather than tied to a narrower measurement class. G01B (dimensional measurement, 7.5%), A61B (diagnostic applications, 6.6%) and G10K (acoustics, 4.4%) show where inspection technique overlaps with adjacent equipment categories. Records can carry more than one class, so these shares sum to more than 100%.
Shares are the percentage of the 2,294 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
Go deeper on Ultrasonic Testing of Additive and Composite Parts with Eureka
This page is one run against one query. Ask Eureka your own question about ultrasonic testing of additive and composite parts and every answer comes back with the patent numbers behind it.
Try EurekaRepresentative filing and most-cited prior art
Ultrasonic inspection reference standard for composite materials (US7216544B2)
Describes a reference standard for calibrating ultrasonic inspection of composite materials using a polymer-resin prism rather than a fiber-reinforced composite step wedge, manufactured by stereolithography to match acoustic properties at lower cost.Filed by The Boeing Company; published 2007-05-15.
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | US5619423A | System, method and apparatus for the ultrasonic inspection of liquid filled tubulars and vessels | 288 |
| 2 | US5007291A | Ultrasonic inspection apparatus with centering means for tubular members | 234 |
| 3 | US5150714A | Ultrasonic inspection method and apparatus with audible output | 187 |
| 4 | US20060243051A1 | Integrated ultrasonic inspection probes, systems, and methods for inspection of composite assemblies | 144 |
| 5 | US4848159A | Ultrasonic inspection probe for laminated structures | 139 |
| 6 | US4174636A | Two wheel ultrasonic rail testing system and method | 139 |
| 7 | US6789427B2 | Phased array ultrasonic inspection method for industrial applications | 135 |
| 8 | US6234025B1 | Ultrasonic inspection apparatus and method using a focused wave device | 129 |
| 9 | US5585921A | Laser-ultrasonic non-destructive, non-contacting inspection system | 127 |
| 10 | US20150068296A1 | Air-Coupled Ultrasonic Inspection Of Rails | 123 |
Citation counts accumulate over time, so older filings are structurally favoured — treat this as a map of influential prior art, not of current filing activity.
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 — useful for deciding where a new filing is likely to compete with dense prior art versus open space.
Leadership is real but not exclusive
The leading assignee alone holds 252 records, well ahead of fifth place at 41 and tenth place at 21. Even so, the top 5 combined take only 22.3% of the full record set, and the top 10 only 28.6% — meaning more than seven in ten records sit with entities outside the ranked leaders.
Activity has pulled back from its 2020 peak
Filings rose to 94 in 2020 before declining through 2021-2024. Recent-year totals for the largest historical filers show no new records in the latest year, though this reflects the publication-lag effect as much as any real slowdown in R&D.
One class carries almost all the weight
G01N (material analysis and testing) appears across 87.5% of the 2,294 records, while every other subclass — measuring, diagnosis, acoustics, nuclear, radar/sonar, vibration generation, welding — sits under 8%. That concentration in a single broad class means differentiation inside G01N claim language matters more than which secondary class a filing picks up.
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to ultrasonic testing of additive and composite parts, with the prior art for and against each one.
Who is filing, and where the gaps sit
The ranked assignee list covers 100 companies scored by patent family count. It is not a top-50 or top-100 industry list — it is the full set the data endpoint returns for this search, and most of it is a long tail of low-volume filers behind a small group of historically active names.
One aerospace-linked filer sets the pace
The leading assignee's record count is roughly six times the tenth-place figure, reflecting decades of accumulated filings around composite and tubular inspection rather than a recent surge.
A steep drop-off after the top few names
Fifth place holds 41 records and tenth place 21 — roughly half the fifth-place count. That gradient suggests a handful of legacy industrial and nuclear-sector filers built durable portfolios early, while most other entities filed occasionally.
Co-filing is limited and mostly intra-group
The strongest co-assignee pairing links two units of the same corporate group, and the next strongest links a company with a named individual inventor rather than an external partner. Cross-company joint filing is not a dominant pattern in this dataset.
| Assignee | Recent year | YoY |
|---|---|---|
| The Boeing Company | 0 | — |
| General Electric Company | 0 | — |
| Toshiba Corporation | 0 | — |
| Westinghouse Electric Corporation | 0 | — |
| Baker Hughes Holdings LLC | 0 | — |
| Hitachi, Ltd. | 0 | — |
| Hitachi-GE Nuclear Energy, Ltd. | 0 | — |
| AUTOMATION IND INC | 0 | — |
Where to take this analysis
The dataset points to a handful of next steps depending on whether the goal is freedom-to-operate, portfolio-building, or tracking a specific competitor.
Check the under-claimed branches first
Anisotropic velocity correction and surface-roughness coupling carry far fewer filings than the core G01N inspection-method space, making them a faster route to a clean claim than filing head-on against the leading assignees.
Explore white space in EurekaScope freedom-to-operate against the top 10, not the whole field
With the top 10 assignees holding 28.6% of all 2,294 records, a targeted FTO search against those names plus the most-cited prior art records covers most of the concentrated risk without reviewing the full long tail.
Run a targeted FTO searchRe-check 2024-2026 filings again in a year
Because publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, the apparent decline after 2021 should be revisited once 2025 filings finish publishing, rather than treated as a confirmed slowdown today.
Set a monitoring alertCommon questions about this landscape
One aerospace-linked filer leads with 252 records out of 2,294 in this dataset, well ahead of the next-largest filers. Fifth place holds 41 records and tenth place 21, showing a steep drop after the top few names. Even so, the top 5 combined account for only 22.3% of all records, and the top 10 for 28.6%, so the majority of the field sits with a long tail of smaller filers rather than a small oligopoly.
Filing peaked at 94 records in 2020 and declined to 30 by 2024, a 62% drop from the 2021 level of 79. That looks like a clear slowdown on paper, but publication lags actual filing by roughly 18 months, so 2025 and 2026 figures in any dataset will understate real activity until later filings finish publishing. Treat 2024 as the last reasonably complete year and revisit the more recent years later.
G01N, the material analysis and testing classification, appears in 87.5% of the 2,294 records in this landscape, making it by far the dominant class. Measuring and dimensional methods (G01B, 7.5%) and diagnostic applications (A61B, 6.6%) trail well behind, with acoustics, nuclear, radar/sonar, vibration generation and welding-related classes each under 5%. Because a single record can carry multiple IPC classes, these figures overlap rather than sum to 100%.
US7216544B2, assigned to The Boeing Company and published in 2007, covers an ultrasonic inspection reference standard for composite materials built from a polymer resin rather than a fiber-reinforced composite step wedge. The claimed advantage is matching the acoustic properties of the traditional composite reference standard at significantly lower manufacturing cost, using a stereolithography process to produce the polymer prism. Anyone designing a new calibration or reference-standard product for composite ultrasonic inspection should review this filing's claim scope before finalising a material choice.
Relative to the dense G01N core, sub-areas such as anisotropic velocity correction for additively manufactured lattice structures, surface-roughness coupling compensation, and immersion-probe reference standards specific to polymer composites carry noticeably thinner filing density. These are technically narrower problems that sit adjacent to the well-covered general inspection-method claims rather than duplicating them. A first filing targeting one of these branches is more likely to find clean claim space than one competing directly against the leading assignees' core portfolios.
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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.
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.