Wire Drawing Patents: Who Leads, Where the Gaps Are 2026
- 26.8% concentration. The five leading assignees combine for 526 of 1,966 records in scope — a small group holds a real but not dominant share of the field.
- Filing peaked in 2021 at 54. and fell to 18 by 2024, a -67% move over that span — though 2025-2026 counts are still filling in and should not be read as a further decline.
- B21C dominates, H01B is thin. Metal extrusion and drawing claims sit on 33.0% of records while cables and conductors sit on just 5.6%, a wide gap in claim density.
Filing growth compares 2021 (54 records) with 2024 (18) — 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 1,966 records in scope (CR5), not by the ranked leaders only.
What this dataset covers
This landscape draws on 1,966 published records matching wire drawing dies, cold heading quality, die wear, drawing lubricants, delamination defects, reduction schedules, torsion testing and phosphate coating between 2015 and mid-2026. The scope spans the mechanical process (drawing dies, reduction schedules, torsion testing) and the materials layer around it (lubricants, phosphate and other coatings, heat treatment), which is why a single record often carries several IPC classes at once.
Filing activity is concentrated in a handful of jurisdictions, led by Japan and the United States, with Europe, China, the United Kingdom and Canada each carrying a meaningful but smaller share of receiving-office activity. That distribution reflects where wire producers and their tooling and lubricant suppliers file first, not necessarily where the underlying manufacturing happens.
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Filing trend and technology composition
Two views of the same 1,966 records: how filing activity has moved year over year, and which IPC subclasses carry the claim density today.
Filing trend, 2017-2026
Filings rose from 19 in 2017 to a peak of 54 in 2021, then declined to 18 by 2024 — a -67% move over that three-year span. 2025 and 2026 figures are still incomplete because publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, so the most recent years should be read as provisional rather than a continued fall.
IPC subclass composition
B21C (metal extrusion and drawing) leads at 33.0% of the 1,966 records, followed by C22C (alloys) at 21.4% and C10M (lubricants) at 19.3%. Because records can carry multiple IPC codes, these shares sum to well over 100% — each one is a share of the same 1,966-record total, not of a shrinking remainder.
Shares are the percentage of the 1,966 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
Go deeper on Wire Drawing and Cold Forming with Eureka
This page is one run against one query. Ask Eureka your own question about wire drawing and cold forming and every answer comes back with the patent numbers behind it.
Try EurekaMost-cited prior art and a recent representative filing
Manufacturing apparatus and method for enameled copper wire
The apparatus combines a wire drawing section performing continuous cold wire drawing through a die, an application and baking section that applies and bakes an enamel coating, and a cooling section controlling the drawn wire's temperature relative to the die outlet. It links die-side cold forming directly to downstream coating and thermal control in a single continuous line.Filed by PROTERIAL, LTD., published 2025-12-11 as US20250378974A1.
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | US6372346B1 | Tough-coated hard powders and sintered articles thereof | 194 |
| 2 | US20050275143A1 | Method for consolidating tough coated hard powders | 185 |
| 3 | US5702548A | Tire having circumferential cables for anchoring the carcass | 120 |
| 4 | US20140087210A1 | Methods of forming a metallic or ceramic article having a novel composition of functionally graded material a… | 108 |
| 5 | US6329069B1 | Composite structure and devices made from same and method | 106 |
| 6 | US6455476B1 | Composition and process for lubricated plastic working of metals | 103 |
| 7 | US6399886B1 | Multifilament drawn radiopaque high elastic cables and methods of making the same | 92 |
| 8 | US20140235513A1 | Coating including inorganic fullerene-like particles and inorganic tubular-like particles | 78 |
| 9 | US6194357B1 | Waterborne lubricant for the cold plastic working of metals | 75 |
| 10 | US4255496A | Steel wire reinforcing elements with a brass-cobalt alloy adhesive coating | 75 |
Citation counts inside a searched corpus favour older filings that have had more time to accumulate citations — treat this table as a map of influence, not of current filing activity.
Each row carries its publication number; clicking a row searches Eureka by that number.
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Browse MCP servers →What the numbers mean for a filing decision
Three read-throughs from the concentration, trend and IPC data above.
The top is real but not closed
526 of 1,966 records sit with five assignees, and the leader alone holds 171. That is enough concentration to matter for freedom-to-operate work in core die and reduction-schedule claims, but it leaves a wide majority of the field to a long tail of single- and low-filing entrants.
A post-2021 pullback, not a dead field
Filings dropped from 54 in 2021 to 18 in 2024. Because publication lags filing by about 18 months, 2025-2026 counts are still incomplete and should not be read as evidence the pullback continued — the last fully-formed comparison point is 2024.
Drawing mechanics carries the claim load
B21C (metal extrusion and drawing) appears on a third of all records, well ahead of C22C alloys at 21.4% and C10M lubricants at 19.3%. Conductor and cable applications (H01B, 5.6%) and welding/brazing (B23K, 7.7%) carry far less claim density relative to the core mechanical process.
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to wire drawing and cold forming, with the prior art for and against each one.
Who is filing, and where the gaps sit
The ranking covers 100 companies returned by the data endpoint, counted in records — not a top-50 or top-100 cut of a larger universe.
A clear single leader
The top-ranked assignee holds 171 records, well ahead of fifth place at 66 and tenth place at 29 — a steep drop-off rather than a gradual one, typical of a field anchored by one or two integrated steelmakers with wire and lubricant divisions.
Co-filing is limited to a few tight pairs
The strongest co-assignee pair appears together 14 times, and the next two pairs 11 and 7 times respectively. This points to parent-subsidiary or joint-venture filing patterns rather than broad industry consortia.
Recent-year activity has gone quiet among the historical leaders
Every one of the assignees tracked for recent-year momentum shows 0 filings in the latest year. Combined with the 2021 peak and subsequent decline, this suggests the leaders' most active filing phase for this claim set has passed, though incomplete recent-year publication data means this should be revisited as later filings surface.
| Assignee | Recent year | YoY |
|---|---|---|
| Kobe Steel, Ltd. | 0 | — |
| Nippon Steel Corporation | 0 | — |
| NV Bekaert SA | 0 | — |
| Nihon Parkerizing Co., Ltd. | 0 | — |
| Sumitomo Metal Industries, Ltd. | 0 | — |
| Sumitomo Electric Industries, Ltd. | 0 | — |
| Chemetall GmbH | 0 | -100% |
| NIPPON STEEL & SUMITOMO METAL CORP | 0 | — |
Where to take this analysis
The landscape points to next steps depending on whether the question is defensive, competitive, or about open claim space.
Run a freedom-to-operate check on core die claims
With 26.8% of records held by five assignees, any new filing touching drawing dies, reduction schedules or die-wear compensation should be checked against the leader's 171-record portfolio before drafting.
Explore Eureka for FTO screeningTrack the under-claimed conductor and coating overlap
H01B sits at only 5.6% of records against B21C's 33.0%, and enamel-bake-integrated drawing lines like the 2025 representative filing suggest this junction is still open.
Explore Eureka for white space mappingWatch for renewed filing once 2025-2026 data completes
Zero latest-year filings among tracked leaders may reflect publication lag rather than a real pullback; re-run the trend once 18 months of lag has cleared.
Explore Eureka for trend monitoringCommon questions on wire drawing and cold forming patents
The dataset's leading assignee holds 171 of 1,966 records, with the top five combined accounting for 526 records, or 26.8% of the field. That leaves the majority of records spread across a long tail of smaller filers, so a single company's portfolio should not be treated as covering the whole technology area. Anyone doing competitive tracking should look at both the concentrated top and the fragmented remainder separately, since they behave differently for freedom-to-operate purposes.
Filings rose to a peak of 54 in 2021, then fell to 18 by 2024, a -67% change over that three-year span. However, publication typically lags actual filing by around 18 months, so 2025 and 2026 counts in most datasets are still incomplete and should not be read as a continuing decline. The fairest read is that activity cooled after 2021, with the true current trajectory not yet fully visible in published records.
B21C covers metal extrusion and drawing — the mechanical process of pulling wire through a die — and appears on 33.0% of the 1,966 records in this dataset, making it the single largest class. C10M covers lubricants, present on 19.3% of records, reflecting how central drawing lubricant formulation is to die wear and surface quality outcomes. A single patent record frequently carries both codes because drawing performance and lubricant chemistry are claimed together.
IPC composition shows H01B (cables, conductors and insulators) at just 5.6% of records against B21C's 33.0%, indicating conductor-specific drawing applications are thinly claimed relative to the core mechanical process. Recent representative filings that integrate cold drawing directly with in-line enamel coating and cooling stages suggest the junction between drawing and downstream coating processes is still open. Torsion-test-linked reduction scheduling and in-line delamination defect detection also show comparatively low claim density relative to the die-wear and lubricant core.
The top 10 ranked assignees combine for 755 records, or 38.4% of all 1,966 records in scope, while the top 5 alone reach 26.8%. That is a meaningful concentration at the very top — the leader's 171 records are more than double the fifth-place total of 66 — but it is not a field locked up by two or three players, since 90 of the 100 ranked companies sit below the tenth-place figure of 29 records. This pattern, a steep leader with a long tail, is typical of a mature mechanical process with an active supplier ecosystem underneath it.
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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.