Organic Rankine Cycle Patents: Leaders & Filing Trends 2026
Filing growth compares 2021 (353 records) with 2024 (294) — 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 7,993 records in scope (CR5), not by the ranked leaders only.
What this dataset covers
This landscape draws on 7,993 published records matching organic Rankine cycle terminology in title, abstract or claims, filed between 2015 and mid-2026. The organic Rankine cycle is a bottoming-cycle technology that recovers low- and medium-grade waste heat — from combustion exhaust, industrial process streams or geothermal sources — and converts it to electricity using an organic working fluid instead of steam. Patent families are the fairer unit of comparison here than raw document counts, since families neutralise aggressive continuation filing and multi-jurisdiction duplication.
The classification mix skews heavily toward steam and thermal power plant claims, with turbine integration and working-fluid material claims forming smaller, more specialised bands beneath that dominant layer.
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Filing trends and technology composition
The dataset spans 7,993 published records filed between 2015 and mid-2026, giving a decade-long view of how organic Rankine cycle claims have shifted across thermal-plant, turbine and refrigeration subclasses.
Filing activity peaked in 2017, then eased through the low-2020s
Filings peaked at 428 in 2017. Volume held near 353 in 2021 before easing to 294 by 2024, a -17% move over that three-year span. 2025 and 2026 figures will keep revising upward as publications catch up with filings, since publication typically lags filing by around 18 months.
F01K thermal-plant claims dominate the classification mix
F01K (steam & thermal power plants) covers 64.4% of the 7,993 records, far ahead of F01D turbine claims at 16.4%. Because a single record can carry multiple IPC subclasses, these shares sum to well over 100% — the chart reads each subclass against the same 7,993-record base, not against each other.
Shares are the percentage of the 7,993 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
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Cascade organic Rankine cycle plant — Turboden S.p.A., 2023-07-13
An organic Rankine cycle system with cascade cycles provided with a first organic Rankine cycle which operates at high temperature, in which a first organic working fluid carries out a heat exchange with a hot source fluid and a second organic Rankine cycle which operates at a temperature lower than the temperature of the first organic Rankine cycle and in which a second organic working fluid carries out a heat exchange with the same hot source. The evaporator of the first organic Rankine cycle is fed by the entire flow rate of the hot source fluid, while the evaporator and preheater of the second organic Rankine cycle are fed by a first partial flow of the hot source fluid.Abstract text as published; claim scope should be confirmed against the granted claim set.
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | US20070161095A1 | Biomass Fuel Synthesis Methods for Increased Energy Efficiency | 270 |
| 2 | US20090211253A1 | Organic Rankine Cycle Mechanically and Thermally Coupled to an Engine Driving a Common Load | 268 |
| 3 | US20080157022A1 | Stabilized Iodocarbon Compositions | 229 |
| 4 | WO2006069362A2 | Stabilized iodocarbon compositions | 220 |
| 5 | US20060010872A1 | Working fluids for thermal energy conversion of waste heat from fuel cells using rankine cycle systems | 211 |
| 6 | US20030005698A1 | LNG regassification process and system | 208 |
| 7 | US20120174581A1 | Closed-Loop Systems and Methods for Geothermal Electricity Generation | 206 |
| 8 | US20040020206A1 | Heat energy utilization system | 206 |
| 9 | US20100263380A1 | Cascaded organic rankine cycle (ORC) system using waste heat from a reciprocating engine | 198 |
| 10 | US5448889A | Method of and apparatus for producing power using compressed air | 190 |
Citation counts favour older records simply because they have had more time to accumulate citations within the searched corpus — treat this as a signal of influence, not of current technical importance.
Each row carries its publication number; clicking a row searches Eureka by that number.
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These are the patterns in the 7,993-record dataset most useful for deciding where to file, who to watch, and where claim space is still open.
Leadership is real but not dominant
The top 5 assignees hold 15.6% of all records and the top 10 hold 22.7% — meaningful concentration, but the remaining three-quarters of the field is spread across a long tail of smaller filers, including single-filing entrants.
Thermal-plant claims occupy most of the space
F01K, covering steam and thermal power plants, appears in nearly two-thirds of the corpus, well ahead of turbine claims (F01D, 16.4%). Component-level branches like working-fluid materials (C09K, 4.9%) remain comparatively open.
Activity has eased from its 2017 peak
Volume peaked at 428 filings in 2017 and settled at 294 by 2024. Because publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, the most recent years understate true activity and should not be read as a slowdown.
China leads filing volume by a wide margin
China's 2,307 records outpace the United States (1,258) and EPO (818), with WIPO's PCT route adding 740 more — a genuinely multi-jurisdictional filing pattern rather than one dominated by a single office.
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to waste-heat recovery: organic rankine cycle patent landscape, with the prior art for and against each one.
| Assignee | Co-assignee | Shared families |
|---|---|---|
| Ormat Industries Ltd. | BRONICKI LUCIEN Y | 27 |
| Saudi Arabian Oil Co. (Saudi Aramco) | Saudi Aramco Services Company | 23 |
| General Electric Company | FREY THOMAS JOHANNES | 21 |
| General Electric Company | AST GABOR | 18 |
| Orcan Energy AG | Technical University of Munich | 14 |
| General Electric Company | KOPECEK HERBERT | 11 |
| General Electric Company | HUCK PIERRE SEBASTIEN | 11 |
| UTC Power Corporation | BIEDERMAN BRUCE P | 10 |
Only 10 co-assignee pairs appear across the dataset, and the strongest pairs cluster around a handful of the largest filers — co-development in this field is the exception, not the norm.
Where to take this analysis next
The figures above set the boundaries of the field. The next layer of work is portfolio-specific — checking a design against the leading holders' claim sets and testing white-space branches for freedom to operate.
Trace a specific claim against the leading portfolios
Run the cascade or flow-splitting architecture described in US20230220789A1 against the filing history of the leading assignees to see which continuations and family members might extend its reach.
Open claim analysis in EurekaTest a white-space filing in working fluids or boiler integration
C09K and F22B carry the lightest classification shares in this dataset — model a first claim combining a working fluid with a specific boiler subsystem before filing.
Explore white space in EurekaWatch the 2025-2026 filing revision
Recent-year filing counts will rise as publications catch up with the roughly 18-month lag — revisit the trend view periodically rather than treating the latest year as final.
Track filing trends in EurekaQuestions practitioners ask about ORC patents
The assignee ranking in this dataset lists 100 companies drawn from 7,993 published records, with the leading filer holding 371 records and the fifth-ranked holder at 129. The top 5 combined account for 15.6% of all 7,993 records, and the top 10 combined reach 22.7% — meaningful concentration at the top, but well short of the field being controlled by a handful of firms. A long tail of smaller filers sits behind that leading group, so freedom-to-operate analysis still needs to check beyond the largest names.
Filing volume peaked in 2017 at 428 records and eased to 294 by 2024, a -17% change from the 353 filed in 2021 — the most recent three-year span the data can support as complete. Figures for 2025 and 2026 will revise upward over time because publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, so the apparent recent dip should not be read as the field cooling. Overall the picture is a mature, still-active field rather than one in early-stage growth.
F01K, covering steam and thermal power plants, appears in 64.4% of the 7,993 records in scope, making it by far the densest classification. F01D (turbines and non-positive-displacement engines) follows at 16.4%, then F03G and F25B in the single-digit percentages. Because records can carry multiple IPC codes, these are not mutually exclusive buckets — a single ORC patent often touches both the thermal-plant and turbine subclasses at once.
China leads the receiving offices with 2,307 records, followed by the United States at 1,258, the European Patent Office at 818, and WIPO's PCT route at 740. Germany and South Korea follow at 345 and 281 respectively. That spread indicates ORC is being pursued as a genuinely international filing strategy rather than concentrated in one jurisdiction, though China's volume warrants particular attention for local freedom-to-operate work.
US20230220789A1, filed by Turboden and dated 2023-07-13, claims a two-loop cascade ORC system where the first, high-temperature loop takes the entire hot-source flow and the second, lower-temperature loop is fed only a partial split of that same source stream through its own evaporator and preheater. The claim is specific to that flow-splitting arrangement, not to cascade ORC architectures generally. Designs that route source heat through an intermediate loop, or split flow at a different point, would need separate legal analysis to confirm they fall outside its scope.
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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.