Wire Drawing Patents: Top Companies & Filing Trends 2026
- Concentrated but not cornered. the ranked leader holds 48 records and the top 5 combined account for 15.5% of all 1,096 records in scope — a real edge, not a lock on the field.
- Filing activity has cooled since its 2021 peak. 71 records that year against 7 so far in the most recent (partial) year, with the 2022 midpoint at 53 signalling a flat-to-declining trend rather than a rebound.
- China dominates the filing venue. 605 of the tracked receiving-office records sit in China, more than the next five offices combined, which reframes where freedom-to-operate work actually matters.
What this landscape covers
Wire drawing and rod processing patents in this dataset span die design, lubrication systems, drawing-force control and surface-quality inspection across 1,096 records filed between 2015 and mid-2026. The search combines free-text claims language on die angle, lubrication, drawing force, wire breakage and surface quality with IPC coverage centred on B21C metal extrusion and drawing, alongside heat treatment class C21D. That combination captures both the mechanical tooling side of the process and the metallurgical conditioning that follows it.
Filing is heavily weighted toward core drawing equipment rather than downstream alloy or cable applications, and the receiving-office spread shows most recent activity routed through Chinese examination rather than Japan, the US or Europe, which have historically anchored this space.
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Filing trend and technology composition
Two views of the same 1,096 records: how filing volume has moved year over year, and how it splits across the IPC subclasses a record can be tagged with.
A 2021 peak, then a pull-back
Annual filings rose from 38 in 2017 to a peak of 71 in 2021, then eased toward 53 by 2022 and down to 7 in the most recent, still-partial year. Publication typically lags filing by around 18 months, so the last one to two years will read lower than the true filing count until the backlog clears — treat the recent drop as partly an artefact of that lag, not solely a slowdown.
Drawing dominates; heat treatment and alloys trail
B21C (metal extrusion & drawing) covers 93.7% of the 1,096 records, confirming this is fundamentally a tooling-and-process dataset. C21D heat treatment (12.0%) and C22C alloys (11.0%) are the next most common tags, followed by smaller shares in rolling, non-ferrous treatment, cable conductors, wire working and powder metallurgy — each in the low single digits and each a narrower, less contested filing zone.
Shares are the percentage of the 1,096 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
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Try EurekaThe records other filings build on
EP2794139B1 — Lubricant container for wire drawing
Filed by CRE 8 Technologies Limited and granted in 2019, this record addresses lubricant delivery during wire drawing — a supporting-equipment claim rather than a die-geometry or force-control claim, illustrating how much of the recent filing activity sits in process infrastructure around the draw rather than the die itself.Publication and assignee details are rendered from the underlying record.
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | US3831428A | Composite wire drawing die | 90 |
| 2 | US4374900A | Composite diamond compact for a wire drawing die and a process for the production of the same | 87 |
| 3 | US20050044687A1 | Method for manufacturing seamed flux-cored welding wire | 70 |
| 4 | US4016736A | Lubricant packed wire drawing dies | 69 |
| 5 | US3934446A | Methods of and apparatus for production of wire | 69 |
| 6 | US5535612A | Method and apparatus for drawing wire through a plurality of standard dies at the die positions | 51 |
| 7 | US20060048864A1 | Hot milled wire rod excelling in wire drawability and enabling avoiding heat treatment before wire drawing | 49 |
| 8 | JP1999172332A | High carbon steel wire rod | 49 |
| 9 | US4545227A | Apparatus for dry type continuous wire drawing | 38 |
| 10 | US6216506B1 | Double-draft wire drawing and collection machine with tension-sensitive speed control | 36 |
Citation counts favour older records simply because they have had longer to accumulate citations inside this corpus — read them as a signal of influence on the field, not of current technical relevance.
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 read-throughs from the concentration, trend and jurisdiction figures above.
A lead, not a lock
The ranked leader holds 48 records against a fifth-place figure of 24 and a tenth-place figure of 10 — a steep drop-off after the first couple of names. Combined with a top 10 share of only 22.4% of all 1,096 records, most of the field is a long tail of single- or few-filing entrants rather than a closed oligopoly.
Cooling, with a lag caveat
Filing volume peaked in 2021 and has fallen in every year since, with the 2022 midpoint of 53 confirming the decline started before the most recent count. Because publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, the final one to two years understate true activity — but the multi-year downward slope from the 2021 peak is a real signal, not just a reporting gap.
Where enforcement risk actually sits
China's 605 tracked records dwarf Japan's 158, the US's 100, EPO's 91, the UK's 52 and Canada's 15. A freedom-to-operate review that stops at USPTO and EPO searching is missing the office where most of this activity is actually being examined.
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to wire drawing and rod processing, with the prior art for and against each one.
Who is filing, and where the gaps are
The leaders are established steel, wire and cable manufacturers; beneath them the field opens into a long tail of specialist toolmakers and single-filing entrants.
Steel and wire majors anchor the top of the ranking
The leading assignees are long-established steel, electric-wire and cable manufacturers whose filings span die design, lubrication and heat-treatment adjacent claims rather than a single narrow niche. Their volume reflects breadth of process coverage built up over years, not a single blocking patent.
Most of the field files thinly
With the top 10 combined holding only 22.4% of all 1,096 records, the bulk of assignees in the ranking are regional manufacturers, component specialists or individual inventors filing a handful of records each. That structure favours a targeted freedom-to-operate search over assuming one or two firms control the space.
Co-filing is rare and mostly intra-group
The strongest co-assignee pairs pair a parent with its materials or technology subsidiary, suggesting most joint filings reflect corporate structure rather than arm's-length technology partnerships. Cross-company collaboration on core drawing IP appears limited across this dataset.
| Assignee | Recent year | YoY |
|---|---|---|
| Sumitomo Electric Industries, Ltd. | 0 | — |
| Nippon Steel Corporation | 0 | — |
| Kobe Steel, Ltd. | 0 | — |
| Bridgestone Corporation | 0 | — |
| Sumitomo Metal Industries, Ltd. | 0 | — |
| A.L.M.T. Corp. | 0 | — |
| Furukawa Electric Co., Ltd. | 0 | — |
| MARSHALL RICHARDS BARCRO LTD | 0 | — |
Where to take this
The figures above answer where filing has concentrated. Turning that into a filing or freedom-to-operate decision means running the specific claim language against this corpus.
Check a specific claim against the corpus
Run a candidate die-geometry, lubrication or force-control claim against the most-cited records here to see how close prior art sits before drafting.
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The gate chips above point to process areas with low IPC density; validate whether that reflects true white space or simply narrower search terms.
Explore in Eureka →Common questions about this landscape
The ranked leader in this dataset holds 48 records, well ahead of fifth place at 24 and tenth place at 10, but that lead does not amount to control of the field. The top 5 assignees combined account for only 15.5% of all 1,096 records in scope, and the top 10 combined reach 22.4%. The remaining three-quarters of the field is spread across a long tail of companies in the 100-company ranking, so a competitive review needs to look well past the first few names.
Filing activity peaked in 2021 at 71 records and has declined in every year since, with 2022 at 53 and the most recent partial year down to 7. Some of that recent drop is a publication-lag artefact, since publication typically trails filing by around 18 months and the newest filings have not all surfaced yet. Even accounting for that lag, the multi-year slope from the 2021 peak downward suggests filing has genuinely cooled rather than merely paused for reporting reasons.
China accounts for 605 of the tracked receiving-office records, more than Japan (158), the United States (100), the European Patent Office (91), the United Kingdom (52) and Canada (15) combined. Any freedom-to-operate or clearance search limited to the US and Europe will miss the office where the majority of current activity is being examined. This matters most for anyone manufacturing or supplying into the Chinese market, where enforcement risk is concentrated.
The dominant class is B21C, metal extrusion and drawing, covering 93.7% of the 1,096 records in scope, confirming this is primarily a tooling-and-process dataset. Heat treatment (C21D, 12.0%) and alloys (C22C, 11.0%) are the next most common tags, with smaller shares in rolling, non-ferrous treatment, cable conductors, wire working and powder metallurgy. Because a single record can carry several IPC tags, these shares add up to more than 100% and should not be summed together.
The smaller IPC branches — wire working (B21F, 2.3%), powder metallurgy (B22F, 2.3%), cable-conductor integration (H01B, 2.6%) and non-ferrous alloy treatment (C22F, 2.8%) — carry far lower filing density than the core B21C drawing class. That lower density does not automatically mean the technology is easier to protect; it may also reflect narrower commercial demand. But for a filer looking to avoid the densest prior art around die geometry and lubrication, these adjacent branches are worth a targeted search before assuming they are open.
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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.