CPC technology class · B41

B41B — Machines OR Accessories FOR Making

Machines or accessories for making, setting, or distributing type; type; photographic or photoelectric composing devices. 5 US utility patents granted 2015–2025, with the leading assignees and year-by-year filing trajectory.

5
US patents granted
B41
Parent CPC class
0
Active assignees
-33%
5-yr velocity

CPC subclass B41B — MACHINES OR ACCESSORIES FOR MAKING, SETTING, OR DISTRIBUTING TYPE; TYPE; PHOTOGRAPHIC OR PHOTOELECTRIC COMPOSING DEVICES — covers 5 US utility patents granted between 2015 and 2025 according to USPTO PatentsView records. This subclass sits within the broader CPC class B41 (PRINTING; LINING MACHINES; TYPEWRITERS; STAMPS), one of roughly 250 top-level technology categories in the Cooperative Patent Classification system jointly maintained by the USPTO and the European Patent Office. At the subclass level, four-character codes like B41B give the most practical resolution for tracking a specific technology domain without losing sight of adjacent filings. Every grant here has been classified by a USPTO examiner based on the technical disclosure in the patent specification.

The competitive landscape in B41B is shaped by a range of assignees actively filing in this space. International Business Machines Corporation leads with 1 patents. Concentration at the top of the leaderboard indicates whether this technology area is dominated by a handful of incumbents or fragmented across many filers — a useful signal for investors evaluating competitive moats and for product teams mapping freedom-to-operate risk.

Filing trajectory matters as much as static counts. The yearly series on this page plots grants from 2015 through 2025, highlighting whether innovation in B41B is accelerating, plateauing, or cooling. Technology areas with rising post-2020 activity often reflect emerging markets or new platform shifts, while declining filings can signal mature domains where incremental improvement has slowed. Researchers, licensing professionals, and competitive-intelligence teams use these patterns — together with the top-assignee distribution — to decide where to invest, where to license, and where to avoid entanglement. All counts on this page come directly from USPTO PatentsView and reflect US granted utility patents only.

Is B41B innovation accelerating?

US utility-patent grants per year in B41B, 2015–2025 — recent five years are down 33% versus 2015–2019.

0.511.522.533.5 201520202023 1

About This Class

CPC subclass B41B belongs to class B41.

5 patents were granted in this class between 2015 and 2025.

Classification System

Cooperative Patent Classification (CPC) is a hierarchical patent classification system used by the USPTO and EPO.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is CPC class B41B?
CPC subclass B41B covers MACHINES OR ACCESSORIES FOR MAKING, SETTING, OR DISTRIBUTING TYPE; TYPE; PHOTOGRAPHIC OR PHOTOELECTRIC COMPOSING DEVICES. It belongs to CPC class B41 (PRINTING; LINING MACHINES; TYPEWRITERS; STAMPS). The Cooperative Patent Classification is a hierarchical system used by the USPTO and European Patent Office to categorize patents by technology.
How many patents have been filed in B41B?
5 US utility patents were granted in CPC subclass B41B between 2015 and 2025, based on USPTO PatentsView data.
Which company holds the most patents in B41B?
International Business Machines Corporation leads B41B with 1 patents, making it the most active assignee in this technology area.
How is patent data for B41B collected?
Patent data comes from USPTO PatentsView, a public research dataset maintained by the United States Patent and Trademark Office. It covers all US granted utility patents and assigns CPC codes based on the technology described in each patent.
What is the difference between CPC class and subclass?
A CPC class (e.g., B41) is a broad technology category. Subclasses like B41B provide finer granularity within that category. PlainPatent organizes data at the subclass level (4-character codes) for the most useful view of technology domains.

Learn More

Explore the patent dataset

Data sourced from USPTO PatentsView — official U.S. government patent data. See our methodology for computation details. Retrieved and formatted by PlainPatent Editorial