Technology landscape · Rare earth elements · 2014–2024
Rare earth patent filings have run flat since 2016; China and recycling gain inside that plateau.
32,931 patent families on extraction, compounds, alloys, magnets, phosphors and recycling. 82% of them include a filing at CNIPA.
- Data
- EPO PATSTAT Global, Spring 2026 (patstat_2026a)
- Unit
- DOCDB family
- Scope
- Rare-earth places in eight IPC/CPC subclasses
- Queries
- 0–12, all published
C22B 264 → 473 · C09K 1,105 (2018) → 822 (2022) · H01F 468 to 663 a year
- 73.9%
growth from 1,940 families (2014) to 3,373 (2016). Every year since sits between 2,860 and 3,395.
Growth - 83.9%
of the families first filed in 2019–2022 include a CNIPA filing, up from 77.1% in 2014–2018.
Where - 20.3%
of the 2022 families carry a recycling or recovery class, up from 12.9% in 2014.
Recycling - 646
families make Nippon Steel the largest applicant group. The top two are Japanese steelmakers.
Applicants - 22.9%
more university families per year in 2019–2024 than in 2014–2018; corporate filings fell 13.6%.
Sectors
01 · Growth
Essentially all the growth came in the first two years
2014–2016
The landscape grew by 73.9%, from 1,940 to 3,373 families a year.
2016–2022
Every year since 2016 sits between 2,860 and 3,395 families. The 2022 peak of 3,395 is less than one per cent above 2016. From 2014 to 2022 the field grew 75.0%, a compound annual rate of 7.3%, essentially all of it in the first two years.
Read with care
2023 and 2024 are provisional: applications publish about 18 months after filing. No growth rate is quoted through either year.
Patent families by earliest filing year
Data table: filing activity 2014–2024
| Filing year | Patent families | Year-on-year |
|---|---|---|
| 2014 | 1,940 | – |
| 2015 | 2,240 | +15.5% |
| 2016 | 3,373 | +50.6% |
| 2017 | 3,073 | −8.9% |
| 2018 | 3,376 | +9.9% |
| 2019 | 2,860 | −15.3% |
| 2020 | 3,189 | +11.5% |
| 2021 | 3,035 | −4.8% |
| 2022 | 3,395 | +11.9% |
| 2023* | 3,277 | −3.5% |
| 2024* | 3,173 | −3.2% |
| Total | 32,931 | – |
Query 2Hatched: provisional years
02 · Where
China gained 6.8 points of share, taken from the national routes
26,990 families (82%) include a filing at CNIPA. The share comparison uses complete filing years only, because a family first filed in 2023 or 2024 has not finished its international filing programme. CNIPA appears in 77.1% of families first filed in 2014–2018 and in 83.9% of those from 2019–2022. Japan falls 3.3 points to 18.7%, the United States 2.8 to 19.2%, Taiwan 0.9 to 3.7%, Korea 0.8 to 11.8% and Germany 1.0 to 2.0%. The EPO holds 13.4% in both periods and the PCT route edges up from 18.5% to 19.3%.
Share of period families with a filing at each office (%), complete filing years
Data table: office share by period
| Office | 2014–2018 families | Share of period | 2019–2022 families | Share of period | Change |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CN | 10,799 | 77.1% | 10,475 | 83.9% | +6.8 pts |
| US | 3,080 | 22.0% | 2,393 | 19.2% | −2.8 pts |
| JP | 3,069 | 21.9% | 2,328 | 18.7% | −3.3 pts |
| WO | 2,588 | 18.5% | 2,408 | 19.3% | +0.8 pts |
| EP | 1,873 | 13.4% | 1,675 | 13.4% | ±0.0 pts |
| KR | 1,772 | 12.7% | 1,477 | 11.8% | −0.8 pts |
| TW | 642 | 4.6% | 460 | 3.7% | −0.9 pts |
| DE | 424 | 3.0% | 250 | 2.0% | −1.0 pts |
| All families in period | 14,002 | 100% | 12,479 | 100% | – |
Query 4Shares of 14,002 and 12,479 families; they sum above 100%
Patent families with a filing at each office, 2014–2024
Data table: families by filing office
| Office | Patent families | Share of 32,931 |
|---|---|---|
| CN China (CNIPA) | 26,990 | 82.0% |
| JP Japan (JPO) | 5,751 | 17.5% |
| US United States (USPTO) | 5,748 | 17.5% |
| WO PCT | 5,619 | 17.1% |
| EP European Patent Office | 3,747 | 11.4% |
| KR Republic of Korea (KIPO) | 3,535 | 10.7% |
| TW Taiwan | 1,194 | 3.6% |
| MX Mexico | 944 | 2.9% |
| DE Germany (DPMA) | 737 | 2.2% |
| CA Canada | 621 | 1.9% |
| RU Russia | 531 | 1.6% |
| AU Australia | 466 | 1.4% |
| BR Brazil | 440 | 1.3% |
Query 3A family counts at every office where it has a member
Period shares sum above 100% because one family reaches several offices. The periods cover five and four filing years, so absolute counts are not comparable between them; shares are. The office totals cover the full window 2014–2024.
03 · Technology
Refining grew 79.2% while phosphors declined from 2018
Alloys (C22C, 9,585 families) and luminescent materials (C09K, 9,524) are the largest sub-areas, ahead of magnets (H01F, 6,149). A family classified both as an alloy and as a magnetic material appears under both, so the subclass counts sum to 34,899 against 32,931 distinct families.
Patent families per classification subclass
Data table: families per subclass
| Subclass | Field | Patent families |
|---|---|---|
| C22C | Alloys: rare-earth-containing steels, magnesium and nickel alloys | 9,585 |
| C09K | Luminescent materials containing rare earth metals | 9,524 |
| H01F | Magnets and magnetic materials, Nd-Fe-B and related | 6,149 |
| C01F | Compounds of rare earth metals | 4,294 |
| C22B | Production and refining of rare earth metals | 3,869 |
| C01G | Complex oxides of other metals containing rare earths | 582 |
| C30B | Single crystals containing rare earth metals | 547 |
| B22F | Rare-earth intermetallic powders and powder metallurgy | 349 |
| Sum of subclasses | non-exclusive | 34,899 |
| Distinct families | 32,931 |
Query 5Non-exclusive; sums above 32,931
Refining
Extraction and refining metallurgy (C22B) grows from 264 families in 2014 to 473 in 2022, a rise of 79.2%, slightly ahead of the 75.0% of the landscape as a whole.
Phosphors
Luminescent materials (C09K) peak at 1,105 families in 2018 and fall to 822 by 2022, a decline of 25.6% from the peak, consistent with a maturing phosphor field.
Magnets
Magnets (H01F) are the most stable large block, within a band of 468 to 663 families a year and with no clear direction. Compounds (C01F) grow modestly.
Families per filing year, five largest sub-areas
Data table: sub-areas by filing year
| Filing year | C22C Alloys | C09K Luminescent | H01F Magnets | C01F Compounds | C22B Production |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2014 | 380 | 592 | 468 | 286 | 264 |
| 2015 | 550 | 647 | 548 | 284 | 285 |
| 2016 | 1,198 | 1,011 | 566 | 362 | 310 |
| 2017 | 961 | 978 | 570 | 341 | 318 |
| 2018 | 1,053 | 1,105 | 529 | 442 | 308 |
| 2019 | 853 | 944 | 476 | 364 | 318 |
| 2020 | 923 | 960 | 594 | 458 | 336 |
| 2021 | 912 | 870 | 526 | 390 | 367 |
| 2022 | 1,006 | 822 | 638 | 483 | 473 |
| 2023* | 883 | 821 | 663 | 424 | 450 |
| 2024* | 866 | 774 | 571 | 460 | 440 |
Query 62023 and 2024 provisional
The largest individual classification places
| Code | Classification place | Patent families |
|---|---|---|
C22C38/005 | Ferrous alloys containing rare earths (Sc, Y, lanthanides) | 6,691 |
H01F1/057 | Permanent magnets of rare earth and group IIIa elements, e.g. Nd2Fe14B | 4,364 |
C22B59/00 | Obtaining rare earth metals | 3,869 |
C09K11/77 | Luminescent materials containing rare earth metals | 2,407 |
H01F1/0577 | Sintered rare-earth permanent magnets | 1,937 |
C09K11/80 | Rare-earth luminescent materials containing aluminium or gallium | 1,603 |
C01F17/00 | Compounds of rare earth metals | 1,593 |
C01F17/10 | Preparation, separation or purification of rare earth compounds | 1,553 |
C22C23/06 | Magnesium alloys with a rare earth metal as next major constituent | 1,329 |
C09K11/78 | Rare-earth luminescent materials containing oxygen | 1,311 |
C09K11/85 | Rare-earth luminescent materials containing halogen | 1,251 |
H01F41/0293 | Grain-boundary diffusion of rare earth elements (Tb, Dy, Ho) into magnets | 1,241 |
C09K2211/182 | Organic electroluminescent complexes of the rare earth metals | 1,208 |
C22C28/00 | Alloys based on a metal not covered elsewhere (rare-earth-based alloys) | 1,159 |
H01F1/055 | Permanent magnets of rare earth and transition metals | 936 |
Query 5Non-exclusive: a family appears in every row that applies to it
04 · Applicants
Two Japanese steelmakers lead a field that is 82% Chinese
Nippon Steel (646 families) and JFE Steel (534) lead, which fits the largest single place in the landscape, C22C38/005 ferrous alloys containing rare earths (6,691 families). The Chinese side is led by academic and state research bodies: Jiangxi University of Science and Technology (346), Northeastern University (241), Central South University (232) and the Baotou Research Institute of Rare Earths (227). Baotou Iron and Steel (320) is the largest Chinese company. The twenty groups account for 5,088 family mentions, at most 15.4% of the landscape: a dispersed field.
Twenty largest applicant groups, patent families 2014–2024
- 01Nippon Steel Company646
- 02JFE Steel Company534
- 03Jiangxi University of Science and Technology University346
- 04Nichia Company329
- 05Baotou Iron and Steel Company320
- 06TDK Company317
- 07Hitachi Metals / Proterial Company283
- 08Northeastern University University241
- 09Panasonic / Matsushita Company235
- 10Central South University University232
- 11Baotou Research Institute of Rare Earths Gov / non-profit227
- 12Grirem Advanced Materials Company206
- 13Toyota Company204
- 14Ningbo Institute of Materials Technology and Engineering (CAS) Research201
- 15Sumitomo Metal Mining Company179
- 16Toshiba Company138
- 17Osram Company137
- 18Shin-Etsu Chemical Company127
- 19Beijing Zhong Ke San Huan Hi-Tech Company106
- 20Zhenghai Magnetic Material Company80
Query 7Consolidated across harmonised name variants; co-filed families count for each partner
Name variants: han_name does not group an organisation across spellings, scripts and corporate history. The same steelmaker appears as NIPPON STEEL CORP and NIPPON STEEL & SUMITOMO METAL CORP, and JFE Steel under three spellings including a full-width Japanese form. The counts merge such variants under a documented rule; no rule catches every variant, so all applicant counts are a lower bound. PATSTAT records no applicant country for most families, so organisations sharing a name across countries (Northeastern University among them) cannot be separated on the data alone.
05 · Outside China
Ten of the eleven largest applicants recorded outside China are Japanese
The eleventh is German: Osram Opto Semiconductors, in phosphors and LEDs. No applicant recorded in the United States, Korea, France or the United Kingdom reaches the threshold of 85 families, although the USPTO receives 5,748 families and KIPO 3,535: those filings are spread across many applicants. The Japanese names span the value chain: steel and alloys, magnets and components, phosphors and lighting, specialty chemicals and end-use manufacturing.
Applicants with a recorded country outside China, patent families
Data table: non-Chinese applicants
| Applicant (harmonised name) | Country | Patent families |
|---|---|---|
| NIPPON STEEL CORP | JP | 547 |
| JFE STEEL CORP | JP | 534 |
| NICHIA CORP | JP | 218 |
| MATSUSHITA ELECT IND CO LTD | JP | 206 |
| TDK CORP | JP | 191 |
| NIPPON STEEL & SUMITOMO METAL CORP | JP | 162 |
| TOYOTA JIDOSHA CO LTD | JP | 106 |
| SHIN ETSU CHEM CO LTD | JP | 101 |
| CO LTD TOSHIBA | JP | 92 |
| DENKA CO LTD | JP | 90 |
| OSRAM OPTO SEMICONDUCTORS GMBH | DE | 89 |
Query 8Harmonised names as PATSTAT records them
A country code is recorded for only a minority of applicants in this field, so this ranking is a lower bound. NIPPON STEEL CORP and NIPPON STEEL & SUMITOMO METAL CORP are successive names of one filer, together 646 families after consolidation. The chart keeps the PATSTAT names so that each bar can be reproduced from the query; consolidated figures are in the Applicants chapter.
06 · Recycling
Recycling filings rose from 250 to 690 families a year
Families that also carry a recycling or secondary-recovery class (C22B7, H01M10/54, Y02W30, Y02P10/20) grow by 176.0% from 2014 to 2022, a compound annual rate of 13.5%, against 75.0% and 7.3% for the landscape. Their share of annual filings goes from 12.9% in 2014 and a trough of 10.2% in 2016 to 20.3% in 2022, holding near 19% in the two provisional years. Over the whole period 4,654 of 32,931 families (14.1%) carry such a class.
Patent families by filing year, recycling and recovery against the rest
Data table: recycling by filing year
| Filing year | All families | Recycling / recovery | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2014 | 1,940 | 250 | 12.9% |
| 2015 | 2,240 | 290 | 12.9% |
| 2016 | 3,373 | 345 | 10.2% |
| 2017 | 3,073 | 323 | 10.5% |
| 2018 | 3,376 | 353 | 10.5% |
| 2019 | 2,860 | 334 | 11.7% |
| 2020 | 3,189 | 394 | 12.4% |
| 2021 | 3,035 | 454 | 15.0% |
| 2022 | 3,395 | 690 | 20.3% |
| 2023* | 3,277 | 623 | 19.0% |
| 2024* | 3,173 | 598 | 18.8% |
| Total | 32,931 | 4,654 | 14.1% |
Query 9Hatched: provisional years
Scheme coverage: Y02W30 and Y02P10/20 are CPC tagging schemes with no IPC equivalent. Of the 4,654 recycling families, 3,314 are reachable only through CPC and 1,340 through IPC, and 3,268 carry a Y tag without either scheme-neutral code. Offices that assign IPC but little CPC are under-represented; in a landscape that is 82% Chinese the recycling figures are a floor.
07 · Partners
The four largest resolvable co-filing pairs stay inside one group
3,875 of the 32,931 families (11.8%) carry more than one applicant; roughly nine in ten are filed by a single organisation. Each of the four largest pairs that resolve to complete names on both sides joins two entities of the same group: a parent and its materials subsidiary, or two successive names of one filer. The largest co-filing relationship overall, 78 families, is centred on Fujian Changting Golden Dragon Rare-Earth Co., Ltd. Cross-organisational collaboration exists, but not at a scale that changes the landscape.
Largest co-applicant pairs with complete names on both sides
| Applicant A | Applicant B | Co-filed families |
|---|---|---|
| NIPPON STEEL & SUMITOMO METAL CORP | NIPPON STEEL CORP | 61 |
| CO LTD TOSHIBA | TOSHIBA MATERIALS CO LTD | 25 |
| HYUNDAI MOTOR CO | KIA CORP | 25 |
| GRIREM ADVANCED MATERIALS CO LTD | GRIREM HI TECH CO LTD | 22 |
Query 10Affiliated entities are not merged
Pairs are counted from applications with two or more distinct harmonised names, each unordered pair once, so an applicant cannot appear in its own partner list. Affiliated entities are not merged, which is why intra-group pairs stay visible. That is a property of the data, not an error.
08 · Sectors
University filings per year rose between the periods, corporate filings fell
Companies hold 16,921 of the 32,931 families (51.4%), universities 10,582 (32.1%). Per year, university filings rise 22.9% between 2014–2018 and 2019–2024 while corporate filings fall 13.6%. Public research bodies stay at about 155 a year; university-affiliated research bodies grow 35.2%, from 93 to 125. Individual inventors fall from 164 to 62 a year, a decline of 61.9%. This chapter uses the full window, unlike the office comparison.
Families per filing year by applicant sector, two periods
Data table: applicant sectors by period
| Sector | Families 2014–2018 | Per year | Families 2019–2024 | Per year | All families |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Company | 8,307 | 1,661 | 8,614 | 1,436 | 16,921 |
| University | 4,276 | 855 | 6,306 | 1,051 | 10,582 |
| Government / non-profit | 765 | 153 | 929 | 155 | 1,694 |
| Government-non-profit university | 463 | 93 | 751 | 125 | 1,214 |
| Individual | 818 | 164 | 374 | 62 | 1,192 |
| No sector assigned | 398 | 80 | 4,460 | 743 | 4,858 |
| Distinct families in the landscape | 32,931 |
Minor sectors below 100 families (hospital, mixed company-and-public) are omitted; they add 141 families. Sector sums exceed the distinct total because a family can carry applicants from several sectors.
Query 11Per year, so five- and six-year periods compare; sectors not exclusive
Unassigned sectors: families with no sector rise from 80 to 743 a year. PATSTAT's sector assignment lags for recently added person records; this is not a new class of applicant. Because those 4,858 families are missing from every sector line, the 2019–2024 figures are understated to an unknown degree. Read the comparison as directional, not exact.
09 · Citations
79.2% of the families from 2014–2019 have been cited
20,402 of the 32,931 families (61.9%) have been cited at least once, with 89,510 citing-family links in total, 2.72 per family. For families first filed in 2014–2019 the cited share is 79.2% (13,356 of 16,862). 2,111 families (6.4%) have been cited by ten or more families. The most cited family has 317 citing families; the second, an atomic-layer-deposition coating of fluorinated rare earth oxide for semiconductor chamber components, 238.
Average citing DOCDB families per patent family, by filing year
Data table: forward citations by filing year
| Filing year | Families | Citing families | Per family |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2014 | 1,940 | 13,091 | 6.75 |
| 2015 | 2,240 | 12,932 | 5.77 |
| 2016 | 3,373 | 14,666 | 4.35 |
| 2017 | 3,073 | 12,543 | 4.08 |
| 2018 | 3,376 | 10,852 | 3.21 |
| 2019 | 2,860 | 8,298 | 2.90 |
| 2020 | 3,189 | 7,067 | 2.22 |
| 2021 | 3,035 | 4,956 | 1.63 |
| 2022 | 3,395 | 3,150 | 0.93 |
| 2023 | 3,277 | 1,313 | 0.40 |
| 2024 | 3,173 | 642 | 0.20 |
| Total | 32,931 | 89,510 | 2.72 |
Query 12Only the older years carry information about impact
The falling bars are a measurement artefact: a family first filed in 2024 has had almost no time to be cited. Forward-citation counts for recent filing years are structurally near zero and must not be read as impact.
10 · How we counted
How the numbers were counted
- One family, one countA DOCDB family counts once, in its earliest filing year; the yearly counts sum to 32,931. Only patents of invention (ipr_type PI); utility models, designs and pseudo-families (docdb_family_id = 0) are excluded.
- Rare earth as the subjectOnly places in which the rare earth is the classified subject matter, in eight subclasses: C22B, C01F, C01G, C22C, H01F, C09K, C30B, B22F.
- IPC and CPC together16,162 families are found by both schemes, 11,307 only through CPC and 5,462 only through IPC. Neither scheme alone is sufficient, so the report counts the union.
- Predecessors restrictedA predecessor symbol is kept only where it names rare earths or lanthanides. The unrestricted union gives 45,796 families, the restricted one 32,931; the true figure lies between the two.
Checks and limits
- Data basisComputed on 15 August 2026 against EPO PATSTAT Global, Spring 2026 (patstat-mtc.patstat_2026a), IPC edition 20260101 (in force 1 January 2026), CPC edition 202608 (in force 1 August 2026).
- How the code set was foundThree entry points: the WIPO catchword index (rare earth, lanthanides), title breadcrumbs (title_full) and CPC definition texts. SEARCH() does not stem, so singular and plural were searched separately; on CPC titles the singular returns 327 symbols and the plural 589. Together: 962 joinable CPC symbols and 143 IPC symbols.
- How it was completedSubtree expansion via the parent relation (CPC grows from 962 to 1,336 symbols; IPC does not grow). Retired symbols added by a prefix pass bounded to NOT is_active (18 CPC symbols). Predecessors joined from the reclassification chains. No code list was filtered on is_active.
- Predecessor costC01G53/00 (nickel compounds), C01G51/00 (cobalt compounds) and C01G45/12 (manganese complex oxides) are broad parents that spawned a rare-earth subgroup; their contents are mostly lithium-ion cathode chemistry. Excluding them removes 12,865 families as a deliberate precision decision.
- Application-domain tags excludedCodes where a rare earth is a constituent of another technology (C08F, C04B, B01J, C03C, H01S, H01M and others) cover 100,175 additional families with no core code. A sample of 24 read as polypropylene compositions, refractory bricks, cordierite beads and polycrystalline diamond, far past the one-in-five off-topic threshold.
- Title-only families not in scope9,796 families with rare earth in the English title carry no rare-earth code, an additional 29.7%. A sample of 20 read as on topic (doped fibres, magnet motors, molten-salt cells, flotation agents), so this is a real recall gap. It stays open because an English-title layer would make the landscape inconsistent across offices.
- Recycling cut is CPC-weighted3,314 of the 4,654 recycling families are reachable only through CPC.
- Filing-office geographyApplicant country is mostly unrecorded, so the geography shows where protection is sought, not where the invention was made.
- Applicant namesHarmonised names do not group spellings, scripts and corporate history; the consolidation catches the largest variant groups only. Counts are a lower bound. Applicants are taken with applt_seq_nr > 0.
- Provisional years2023 and 2024 are still filling up. No growth rate ends in either year.
- Grant rate62.5% for the 2014–2019 cohort, which is old enough to be mostly decided. Across all filing years it is 55.2%, a figure that measures examination speed as much as success.
- Utility models excluded2,942 families in the period are utility-model-only and not counted.
- OverlapsClasses, offices and sectors overlap, so their sub-totals exceed the family total. Every such table states its sum next to the distinct total.
- No external magnitude checkNo independent family count for a comparable scope could be obtained. Recent peer-reviewed patent studies describe a China-centred landscape and rising recycling, consistent with this report, but no numeric cross-check is claimed.
- AcknowledgementThe initial framing (classification codes for rare-earth extraction and recovery combined with a proximity text search) was provided by Riccardo Priore, PhD, Centro Patlib, AREA SCIENCE PARK, Trieste.
The CODESET block that every query repeats
Query 1queries.sql · Queries 0–12 with the code-set construction
Release protocol
- Agentsearch + draftBuilt the code set and queried PATSTAT read-only through the patstat-mcp server. Every number comes from SQL.
- Checks13 rulesEvery claim must trace back to a query; chart and table must agree.
- Reviewsubject expertChecks scope, counts and wording before publication.
- Approvalsecond personA second person not involved in the report approves publication.
Next step
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