Wave Energy Converter Corrosion Patents: Leaders & White Space 2026
- Filing peaked in 2017 at 24 records and has declined since, with the 2022 midpoint at just 9 — this is a mature, contracting filing wave, not a growing one.
- Corrosion-specific claims are thin C23F (corrosion & metal removal) accounts for only 5 of 49 records against 47 in F03B, meaning most filings treat corrosion as incidental to the hydraulic mechanism, not as the core invention.
- A tight cluster of three co-inventors Sheldon Coulson, Shalhoub and Place appear together across the strongest co-assignee pairs, all at the same collaboration strength of 6.
What this landscape covers
Wave energy converters spend their operating life in salt water, so the mechanisms that survive — cathodic protection systems, corrosion-resistant coatings, sealed drivetrains — sit at the intersection of two very different patent bodies: marine corrosion engineering and wave-to-electricity conversion hardware. This dataset pulls 49 patent families where both elements are claimed together, rather than treating corrosion protection as a generic mention in a hydraulic-machine filing.
The technology composition skews heavily toward the energy-conversion hardware itself: hydraulic machines and generators dominate the IPC mix, while corrosion-specific subclasses remain a small minority. That split is the central fact of this landscape — it tells a filer where the crowded claim space is, and where corrosion protection is still described only in passing.
Filing trend and technology mix
Publication counts lag filing dates by roughly 18 months, so the last one or two years in any trend chart will always look thinner than they eventually turn out to be. Read the 2017 peak and the subsequent decline as the more reliable signal.
A filing wave that crested in 2017 and has not returned
Filings hit 24 in 2017, the peak across the whole window, then fell toward the 2022 midpoint of 9 and continued lower. This pattern looks like a burst of early corrosion-hardening activity around a wave-energy hardware wave rather than a sustained, still-building field.
Hydraulic hardware dominates; corrosion claims are a minority
F03B (hydraulic machines and engines) appears in 47 of 49 records and H02K (motors and generators) in 19, while C23F (corrosion and metal removal) appears in only 5. Most patents here are wave-energy hardware patents that reference corrosion protection, not corrosion-protection patents built for this hardware.
Shares are the percentage of the 49 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
Go deeper on Wave Energy Converter Corrosion Resistance with Eureka
This page is one run against one query. Ask Eureka your own question about wave energy converter corrosion resistance and every answer comes back with the patent numbers behind it.
Try EurekaThe most-cited records
Inertial wave energy converter (US20180073482A1)
A wave energy converter generates power from a wave-induced separation of a positively buoyant flotation module and a submerged negatively buoyant mass, using a rotating pulley to drive a power-take-off system.Filed by Lone Gull Holdings, this design separates the buoyant and submerged mass mechanically via a pulley-driven power take-off, rather than through a direct linear generator — a structural choice that shapes what a corrosion-resistant sealing or coating claim can attach to.
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | US20170198401A1 | Linear faraday induction generator for the generation of electrical power from ocean wave kinetic energy and … | 68 |
| 2 | US4392349A | Spaced apart wave generator float array | 50 |
| 3 | US7525212B1 | Ocean power harvester | 31 |
| 4 | US20180073482A1 | Inertial wave energy converter | 23 |
| 5 | US10011910B2 | Linear faraday induction generator for the generation of electrical power from ocean wave kinetic energy and … | 23 |
| 6 | US20180030953A1 | Wave energy converter with a depth adjustable paravane | 14 |
| 7 | WO2018125318A2 | Inertial wave energy converter | 10 |
| 8 | CN110318058A | 一种利用波浪能发电防止海工平台海潮差腐蚀的方法 | 5 |
| 9 | WO2008036141A2 | Ocean power harvester | 4 |
| 10 | WO2022261109A1 | Parametric wave energy, subsea power generation | 3 |
Citation counts favour older filings simply because they have had longer to accumulate citations inside this corpus; treat them as a measure of influence on later filers, not of current commercial relevance.
Patent titles are shown in the language they were filed in, not translated, so that each record stays verifiable against the original filing — a translated title will not match in Eureka or in any national register. Each row carries its publication number; clicking a row searches Eureka by that number.
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Browse MCP servers →What the data means for a filing decision
Three patterns stand out once the IPC mix and citation leaders are read together: where the claim space is dense, where it is thin, and who the citation record points to as the technical reference point.
The filing wave has already broken
Activity peaked at 24 records in 2017 and has fallen steadily since, with the 2022 midpoint at only 9. A filer entering now is not joining a growing field; they are filing into a corpus that already reflects a decade of hardware iteration.
Hydraulic machinery claims occupy almost the whole set
F03B appears in nearly every record in this corpus, meaning the core mechanical architecture of wave converters is heavily claimed. Corrosion-specific subclass C23F appears in only 5 records, leaving room for claims that isolate the protective system rather than the whole device.
Linear Faraday induction designs are the most-referenced architecture
The most-cited record in this set, a linear Faraday induction generator, has been cited 68 times, well ahead of the next tier. Any corrosion-hardening claim aimed at a linear induction power-take-off should expect to be read against this family first.
A small, tightly linked inventor group drives the strongest pairings
The three strongest co-assignee pairs in the dataset all involve the same three individuals at equal strength, suggesting a single research group rather than several independent teams converging on the same claims.
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to wave energy converter corrosion resistance, with the prior art for and against each one.
Assignee landscape
Recent-year momentum across every tracked assignee reads as zero in the latest year, consistent with the broader decline shown in the filing trend — this is a field where the named leaders were most active earlier in the window rather than now.
Sheldon Coulson, Shalhoub and Place
These three names form the strongest co-assignee pairs in the dataset, each pairing appearing at the same collaboration strength, pointing to a small group filing together repeatedly rather than a corporate R&D pipeline.
Lone Gull Holdings
Holder of the most-cited inertial wave energy converter design in this set; the underlying mechanical architecture (buoyant float, submerged mass, pulley-driven power take-off) is the reference point later filers are cited against.
US-centred filing with a thin international tail
The United States leads receiving offices with 11 filings, ahead of WIPO/PCT at 9 and Europe at 7; Australia, New Zealand and China each show single-digit counts, indicating protection has been sought mainly in a small number of jurisdictions.
| Assignee | Recent year | YoY |
|---|---|---|
| Baldex Corporation | 0 | — |
| SHELDON COULSON GARTH ALEXANDER | 0 | — |
| SHALHOUB RABEH BASSAM | 0 | — |
| PLACE DANIEL WILLIAM | 0 | — |
| MOFFAT BRIAN LEE | 0 | — |
| STAPELMANN FRANK HERBERT | 0 | — |
| CATLIN C S | 0 | — |
| Lone Gull Holdings, Ltd. | 0 | — |
Where to take this analysis
The IPC split and citation pattern point to specific next questions for an R&D or IP team working in this space.
Map corrosion claims against hydraulic hardware families
Cross-reference the five C23F records against the 47 F03B families to see exactly which mechanical structures already carry a corrosion-specific claim and which do not.
Explore in EurekaTrace the linear Faraday induction citation chain
Follow the citation path from the 68-citation top record through the related 23-citation family to understand how the design has been built on by later filers.
Explore in EurekaAssess the individual-inventor cluster for licensing exposure
The Sheldon Coulson, Shalhoub and Place co-filing group holds the densest collaboration pattern in this set; understanding their claim scope matters before filing adjacent designs.
Explore in EurekaCommon questions on this landscape
This landscape identifies 49 patent families published between 2015 and mid-2026 that combine wave energy conversion hardware with marine corrosion protection, cathodic protection or corrosion-resistant coating claims. Filing peaked in 2017 at 24 records and has declined since, with the 2022 midpoint at only 9. Because publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, the most recent years in this count are understated and will rise somewhat as later filings publish.
The strongest pattern in the assignee data is a small group of individual co-inventors — Sheldon Coulson, Shalhoub and Place — who appear together across the highest-strength co-assignee pairs in the dataset. Lone Gull Holdings holds the most-cited individual record, an inertial wave energy converter design. Recent-year momentum across every tracked name in this set shows zero filings in the latest year, consistent with the overall decline since 2017.
Of the 49 records in this landscape, only 5 fall under the C23F corrosion-and-metal-removal IPC subclass, compared with 47 under F03B for hydraulic machines and engines. That gap means most filings treat corrosion resistance as a secondary feature of a hydraulic or generator design rather than as the primary invention. It leaves room for claims that isolate the protective coating, sealing or cathodic system as the inventive core rather than bundling it into the mechanical architecture.
US20180073482A1, assigned to Lone Gull Holdings, describes an inertial wave energy converter that generates power from the wave-induced separation of a positively buoyant flotation module and a submerged negatively buoyant mass, using a rotating pulley to drive a power-take-off system. It is the representative record for this landscape and sits among the most-cited families in the corpus. Its mechanical architecture — separated buoyant and submerged masses linked by a pulley — is a distinct structural approach from the linear Faraday induction designs that top the citation table, so it defines a separate claim boundary for anyone designing a competing power-take-off.
The clearest gaps sit in corrosion-specific engineering applied to structures that are otherwise heavily claimed on the mechanical side: sacrificial-anode placement on submerged mass assemblies, sealed bearing coatings for pulley-driven power take-off systems, cathodic protection retrofitted onto linear induction stators, and corrosion-resistant gearing interfaces within F16H drivetrains. Each of these sits adjacent to a densely filed hardware branch (F03B, H02K, F16H) but is not itself well covered by the thin C23F corrosion subclass. A first claim in any of these areas would need to specify the protective mechanism and its attachment point on the named hardware structure, rather than claiming corrosion resistance generically.
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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.
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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.