Valve Actuator and Partial Stroke Testing Patents: Who Leads and Where the Field Is Still Open
21.5% concentration at the top. The five leading filers hold 886 of 4,117 records in scope, but a long tail of 95 further ranked companies still accounts for most of the field. Volume ran from 94 records in 2017 to a peak of 197 in 2018, then eased toward 8 in 2026 — a figure still filling in given the roughly 18-month lag between filing and publication. The cleanest recent read is the 2021-to-2024 span, where filings moved from 172 to 96, a documented -44% change; treat any year after 2024 as provisional rather than a sign of a continued decline.
- 1FISHER CONTROLS INT LLC8.0%
- 2BAXTER INT INC4.8%
- 3BAXTER HEALTHCARE SA4.6%
- 4TYCO FIRE & SECURITY GMBH2.1%
- 5FISHER ROSEMOUNT SYST INC2.1%
See the full valve actuators and partial stroke testing 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 valve actuator patents
Who holds the most patents in valve actuator and partial stroke testing technology?
The dataset ranks 100 companies by patent family count, with the leading filer holding 329 of the 4,117 records in scope and the fifth-ranked company at 85. That leaves a long tail: the tenth-ranked company holds 44, and the remaining 90 ranked companies split the rest. This is a field with a genuine leader but no single company close to a lockout, so a new entrant's freedom-to-operate analysis needs to look well past the top five names.
Is valve actuator patent filing increasing or decreasing?
Filing peaked at 197 records in 2018 and has since declined, with the most reliable recent comparison — 2021's 172 records against 2024's 96 — showing a documented -44% change. Figures from 2025 and 2026 are still incomplete because patent publication typically lags filing by around 18 months, so those years understate real activity and should not be read as proof the decline is continuing. Anyone tracking this trend should revisit the 2025-2026 figures again in a year or two once they have filled in.
What is a partial stroke test and why does it show up so often in these patents?
A partial stroke test moves a valve actuator a small, controlled distance from its resting position and back, verifying the actuator and its fail-safe mechanism will move on demand without taking the valve fully off its process position. It matters in safety-critical process installations where a valve may sit unmoved for years and needs periodic proof it will still stroke to its fail-safe position in an emergency. The representative record in this dataset, WO2019048850A1, is built around exactly this capability, using independently controlled fluid chambers on either side of the actuation piston to support tested partial movement.
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 Valve Actuators and Partial Stroke Testing 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.