AMPulse Industry Statistics

3D Printing Patent Statistics by Country and Company (2026)

Name: Additive Manufacturing Patent Statistics
Creator: AMPulse

Patent activity is one of the few hard signals of where additive manufacturing R&D actually happens. This page tracks 24,008high-confidence AM patent filings across six jurisdictions, built bottom-up from AMPulse's company-linked, high-confidence AM patent cohort rather than top-down market estimates. Live aggregates refresh after each patent pipeline run; source data as of 2026-09-10.

24,008
high-confidence AM patents: 778
companies with AM filings: 6
patent jurisdictions: 136,440
patents tracked in total

AM patent filings by jurisdiction, 2013–2025

In this dataset, China's patent office (CNIPA) overtook the USPTO as the largest venue for AM filings in 2023, while US filings peaked in 2021 and have declined since. PCT international applications (WIPO) track the industry's globalization: companies increasingly file once and designate many markets.

High-confidence AM patent filings (relevance ≥0.8) by application year and jurisdiction. The cohort requires core AM classifications or explicit AM process language; adjacent manufacturing is excluded. Recent totals will rise as applications publish.Source: AMPulse patent database via KIPRIS and licensed IP data enrichment, as of 2026-09-10.

Most active AM patent filers

The 20 most active AM patent filers among companies tracked by AMPulse, counting only high-confidence AM filings linked to the company at high match confidence. Established machine builders (Renishaw, TRUMPF, Nikon SLM Solutions, DMG MORI) sit alongside younger process specialists like VulcanForms and Additive Industries.

#	Company	HQ	AM patent filings
1	Stratasys	US	491
2	Nikon SLM Solutions	DE	261
3	TRUMPF	DE	242
4	Renishaw	GB	233
5	3D Systems	US	230
6	GE Additive	US	159
7	EOS	DE	150
8	DMG MORI	JP	142
9	Mitsubishi Electric	JP	137
10	Arkema	FR	136
11	Xerox Elem Additive Solutions	US	132
12	Anycubic	CN	115
13	Creality	CN	112
14	MTU Aero Engines	DE	109
15	AddUp	FR	106
16	voxeljet	DE	106
17	Arcam AB	SE	103
18	Mitsubishi Heavy Industries	JP	103
19	Markforged	US	100
20	Formlabs	US	94

Counts are patent filings across all six jurisdictions, not deduplicated patent families, and reflect only links verified at ≥0.90 applicant-match confidence. Companies whose filings route through parent entities or unlinked subsidiaries are undercounted; see methodology.

What AM patents cover beyond the printer

Co-classification codes on AM patents show where the invention actually lands. The mix highlights the process physics, materials chemistry, software, and application domains that sit alongside core AM process classifications.

Top IPC/CPC technology classes co-assigned on high-confidence AM patents, excluding the core AM process classes (B33Y, B29C, B22F) and the cross-sectional Y02P climate tag.Source: AMPulse patent database via KIPRIS and licensed IP data enrichment, as of 2026-09-10.

Scope. Figures cover 24,008patent filings scoring at least 0.8 under AMPulse's versioned precision-first relevance rules. Core IPC/CPC classes B33Y, B29C 64, and B22F 10/12 score highest; patents with explicit AM process language are also included. Adjacent manufacturing candidates scored 0.65 and all unrelated portfolio filings are excluded. AMPulse tracks 136,440 patents in total across the portfolios of tracked AM companies.

Source and coverage. Patent records are ingested from the KIPRIS Plus API and enriched from licensed bibliographic and legal-event exports, covering US, EP, WO, CN, JP, and KR publications. The collection is company-anchored: patents are retrieved for the 6,665 additive-manufacturing companies AMPulse tracks, so it is not an exhaustive census of every AM patent worldwide. Filings from entities outside the tracked universe are not counted.

Company matching. Patents link to companies through applicant-name matching with a confidence score. The company ranking counts only links at ≥0.90 confidence, the pipeline's auto-accept threshold; lower-confidence candidate links are excluded. Filings made through parent conglomerates, holding companies, or subsidiaries under different names may therefore be undercounted for some companies.

Counting. Counts are individual filings per jurisdiction, not deduplicated patent families: one invention filed in the US, Europe, and via PCT counts three times, once per venue. Filing years use the application date. Recent years (2024 onward) are structurally undercounted because most applications publish only 18 months after filing.

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Lee, S. (2026). 3D Printing Patent Statistics by Country and Company (2026). AMPulse Industry Statistics. https://www.ampulse.online/stats/am-patent-statistics