Wind-Assisted Propulsion Marine Propulsion Patent Landscape 2026
- 231 families, one classification. Every tracked record sits under B63H marine propulsion, with 142 overlapping B63B ship/vessel classifications — the claim space is concentrated, not scattered.
- Filings peaked in 2022 at 63 and have not recovered. Recent-year momentum for every major assignee, including the two most-paired Korean shipbuilders, shows 0 filings or a -100% year-on-year drop.
- South Korea receives 138 of the tracked filings. China, the EPO, WIPO, Finland and Japan trail well behind, making receiving-office choice a strong proxy for where this technology is actually being commercialised.
A concentrated field built on a small number of architectures
Wind-assisted propulsion patenting covers three recognised device architectures: rotor sails using the Magnus effect through a rotating cylinder, wingsails using a rigid aerofoil structure, and suction sails using boundary-layer control. All 231 tracked families sit under the marine propulsion and steering classification B63H, and the large majority also overlap B63B for ship and vessel structure — this is a field defined by mechanical integration onto a hull, not by a wide spread of unrelated inventions.
Filing activity is recent by patent-landscape standards: the earliest meaningful volume in this dataset appears in 2017, and the field peaked in 2022. Receiving-office concentration in South Korea points to where commercialisation interest has been strongest, though publication lag means the last one to two years of filings are undercounted in any count taken today.
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Filing trends and technology composition
231 patent families published between 2015 and the mid-2026 data cut-off, concentrated almost entirely under marine propulsion and steering classifications.
Filings rose to a 2022 peak, then flattened
Annual filings climbed from 4 in 2017 to a peak of 63 in 2022. Volume has not exceeded that peak since, and the most recent year is necessarily undercounted because publication typically lags filing by around 18 months.
Marine propulsion carries the field; auxiliary and drive classes trail
Every record sits in B63H (marine propulsion & steering), with B63B (ships & vessels) as the next densest overlap at 142. Ship auxiliaries (B63J, 39), wind motors (F03D, 18), bearings/couplings (F16C, 18) and generators (H02K, 15) form a thinner second tier, with composite-shaping classes (B29C, B29D) thinner still.
Go deeper on Wind-Assisted Propulsion Marine Propulsion with Eureka
This page is one run against one query. Ask Eureka your own question about wind-assisted propulsion marine propulsion and every answer comes back with the patent numbers behind it.
Try EurekaThe patent every rotor sail filing has to clear
US20090217851A1 — Rotor sail and ship with a rotor sail
A rotor sail is provided having a base and a rotary cylinder mounted on the base in a manner permitting rotation about its longitudinal axis designed as the rotor axis, and a drive for rotating the rotary cylinder. An enclosing outer surface of the rotary cylinder serves as a wind-exposed surface in operation. So that the rotor sail can be operated in a more environmentally friendly manner, it is provided with a photovoltaic system having solar cells to generate electric energy for the drive having an electric motor. The solar cells are located in the rotary cylinder.Filed by MAGNUS ROTOR SOLAR SYSTEMS LTD., 2009-09-03. Cited 39 times within this corpus — the second most-cited record tracked.
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | US5271349A | Wing sail structure | 48 |
| 2 | US20090217851A1 | Rotor sail and ship with a rotor sail | 39 |
| 3 | US4369724A | Wingsail | 21 |
| 4 | CN106938693A | 利用马格纳斯效应的圆台形旋筒风帆装置 | 19 |
| 5 | GB2160165A | Wing sail | 18 |
| 6 | US5575233A | Monoplane and low thrust wingsail arrangements | 14 |
| 7 | CN209225373U | 一种船舶风力推进及节能控制系统 | 10 |
| 8 | DE102006034873A1 | Rotor sail for ship, has surface with bulged profile, where final shape of sail corresponds to row of tori or… | 10 |
| 9 | KR102445902B1 | Magnetic Levitation Rotor Sail | 9 |
| 10 | GB2602033A | A rotor sail | 7 |
Ranked by citation count within the searched corpus; older wingsail structure patents lead because citation counts favour age, not current 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 filing data actually shows
Three signals matter more than the raw family count: where the classification density sits, who is still filing, and how citation weight is distributed across old versus new architectures.
Marine propulsion, not general vessel design, carries the claim space
Every one of the 231 families sits under B63H (marine propulsion & steering); 142 also touch B63B (ships & vessels). The gap between those two numbers is the auxiliary and drive-integration claim space — B63J, F03D, F16C and H02K — where density drops sharply.
The 2022 peak has not been matched since
Filings rose from 4 in 2017 to 63 in 2022, then flattened. Every major assignee tracked for recent-year momentum, including the two most active co-filing pairs, shows zero filings in the latest year or a -100% year-on-year change.
Citation leadership sits with the oldest wingsail patents
The five most-cited records are dominated by wingsail structure patents from the 1980s-2000s, led by US5271349A at 48 citations. High citation counts here signal influence within an older, cited-often corpus rather than current commercial weight — recent rotor sail filings have not yet had time to accumulate comparable citation counts.
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to wind-assisted propulsion marine propulsion, with the prior art for and against each one.
| Assignee | Co-assignee | Shared families |
|---|---|---|
| Hyundai Heavy Industries Co., Ltd. | HD KOREA SHIPBUILDING & OFFSHORE ENGINEERING CO LTD | 17 |
| Hanwha Ocean Co., Ltd. | SNU R&DB Foundation | 13 |
| Hyundai Heavy Industries Co., Ltd. | HD Hyundai Samho Co., Ltd. | 11 |
| HD KOREA SHIPBUILDING & OFFSHORE ENGINEERING CO LTD | HD Hyundai Samho Co., Ltd. | 11 |
| Kim Su-hwan | KIM SU HWAN | 3 |
| Anemoi Marine Technologies Ltd. | Anemoi Marine Technologies Ltd. | 2 |
| Norsepower Oy Ltd. | Norsepower | 1 |
| Hyundai Heavy Industries Co., Ltd. | HD Korea Shipbuilding & Offshore Engineering Co., Ltd. | 1 |
Ten co-assignee pairs appear in the dataset. The strongest, 现代重工业株式会社 with HD Korea Shipbuilding & Offshore Engineering Co Ltd, shares 17 filings; 韩华海洋株式会社 with SNU研发业务基金会 shares 13. This is joint-venture-style filing behaviour, not scattered individual invention.
Who is filing, and who has stopped
Filing activity concentrates among Korean shipbuilders and affiliated research bodies, several of whom co-file as pairs. Recent-year momentum across nearly every named assignee has dropped to zero, which changes how a freedom-to-operate review should weight 'active' competitors.
The strongest co-assignee pair in the dataset
These two entities share 17 co-filed families, the highest pairing count of the ten co-assignee pairs identified. This level of joint filing suggests coordinated R&D between a shipbuilder and its offshore engineering arm rather than incidental overlap.
An industry–university filing pair
The second-strongest pairing links a shipbuilder to a university research foundation, a pattern consistent with sponsored or joint research programmes feeding directly into filed claims.
South Korea is the dominant filing venue
South Korea accounts for the large majority of receiving-office activity tracked, well ahead of China (17), the EPO (13), WIPO/PCT (12), Finland (11) and Japan (8). Office choice here is a stronger signal of where this technology is being commercialised than the assignee names alone.
| Assignee | Recent year | YoY |
|---|---|---|
| Hanwha Ocean Co., Ltd. | 0 | — |
| Norsepower Oy Ltd. | 0 | -100% |
| Korea Institute of Ocean Science & Technology (KIOST) | 0 | — |
| Hyundai Heavy Industries Co., Ltd. | 0 | -100% |
| HD KOREA SHIPBUILDING & OFFSHORE ENGINEERING CO LTD | 0 | -100% |
| SNU R&DB Foundation | 0 | -100% |
| Kim Su-hwan | 0 | — |
| Anemoi Marine Technologies Ltd. | 0 | — |
Where to take this analysis next
The filing data points to specific follow-up work rather than a single conclusion — the flattened trend and the classification gaps both need closer reading before a filing or freedom-to-operate decision.
Chart freedom-to-operate against the top-cited records
US5271349A, US20090217851A1 and US4369724A carry the field's heaviest citation weight. Any new rotor sail or wingsail filing should be claim-charted against these three before drafting, not just searched against them.
Run a claim chart in EurekaWatch for a re-acceleration signal
Every major assignee shows zero filings or a -100% year-on-year drop in the latest tracked year. Because publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, this could reverse — worth monitoring rather than treating as a permanent field slowdown.
Set a filing-trend alert in EurekaScope the bearing, generator and composite white space
F16C, H02K and B29C/B29D show materially thinner coverage than the B63H/B63B sail-concept core. A component- or process-level claim in one of these classes is more likely to clear prior art than a new sail-structure claim.
Explore white space in EurekaFrequently asked questions
The tracked dataset contains 231 patent families published between 2015 and the mid-2026 cut-off, all classified under marine propulsion and steering (B63H). This counts distinct families rather than raw document counts, which is the fairer unit because it neutralises duplicate continuation filings and multi-jurisdiction copies of the same invention. Because publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, the true 2025-2026 filing volume is understated in any count taken today.
Wingsail structures hold the oldest and most-cited foundational patents in the dataset, including US5271349A and US4369724A, which shows a long citation lineage. Rotor sail technology, by contrast, shows stronger recent filing activity and overlaps more heavily with auxiliary and drive-integration classifications such as B63J and F03D. Neither term dominates the overall IPC spread outright; the practical difference is that wingsail claims are older and more cited, while rotor sail claims are more active in the recent filing window.
Filing activity is concentrated among a small group of Korean shipbuilders and research bodies, with strong co-assignee pairing between 现代重工业株式会社 and HD Korea Shipbuilding & Offshore Engineering Co Ltd (17 shared filings), and between 韩华海洋株式会社 and SNU研发业务基金会 (13 shared filings). South Korea also dominates as a receiving office with 138 of the tracked records. That said, recent-year momentum for these same leading assignees has dropped to zero or shown -100% year-on-year change, indicating a pause rather than sustained acceleration even among the top filers.
US20090217851A1, assigned to Magnus Rotor Solar Systems Ltd., claims a rotor sail with a base, a rotating cylinder driven by a motor, and a built-in photovoltaic system that powers that motor from within the rotor body itself. It is one of the most-cited records in the field, cited 39 times, so it functions as a benchmark reference for later filings. It does not block rotor sails powered from shipboard grid electricity or from an off-rotor auxiliary power source, so hybrid or externally-powered rotor drive architectures sit outside its specific claim combination.
The thinnest overlaps sit outside the core B63H/B63B sail-concept classifications, in bearing and coupling hardware (F16C, 18 records), generator integration (H02K, 15 records) and composite fabrication methods for rotor or wingsail bodies (B29C/B29D, 14 and 12 records). These are process- and component-level claim opportunities rather than new sail concepts, and they sit adjacent to a filing landscape that has already flattened since its 2022 peak. A narrow claim tied to a specific bearing, seal, or composite lay-up process is more likely to clear prior art than a broad structural sail claim.
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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.