CPC technology class · B43

B43L — Articles FOR Writing OR Drawing UPON

Articles for writing or drawing upon; ; writing or drawing aids;; accessories for writing or drawing. 358 US utility patents granted 2015–2025, with the leading assignees and year-by-year filing trajectory.

358
US patents granted
B43
Parent CPC class
20
Active assignees
+36%
5-yr velocity
Top assignee: SOCIÉTÉ BIC (11 patents)

CPC subclass B43L — ARTICLES FOR WRITING OR DRAWING UPON; ; WRITING OR DRAWING AIDS;; ACCESSORIES FOR WRITING OR DRAWING — covers 358 US utility patents granted between 2015 and 2025 according to USPTO PatentsView records. This subclass sits within the broader CPC class B43 (WRITING OR DRAWING IMPLEMENTS; BUREAU ACCESSORIES), 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 B43L 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 B43L is shaped by 20 distinct companies actively filing in this space. SOCIÉTÉ BIC leads with 11 patents, followed by SOCIÉTÉ BIC at 91 grants and Sanford L.P. at 131. 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 B43L 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 B43L innovation accelerating?

US utility-patent grants per year in B43L, 2015–2025 — recent five years are up 36% versus 2015–2019.

102030405060 20152016201720182019202020212022202320242025 21

Who leads B43L?

The 12 most active assignees in ARTICLES FOR WRITING OR DRAWING UPON; ; WRITING OR DRAWING AIDS;; ACCESSORIES FOR WRITING OR DRAWING — wider bars mean more grants

patents

What this shows SociÉTÉ Bic is the most active filer in B43L, holding 11 of the 358 patents in this class. Concentration at the top signals how contestable this technology area is for new entrants.

Source USPTO PatentsView — granted utility patents As of 2015–2025 grant years
View data table

About This Class

CPC subclass B43L belongs to class B43.

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

20 companies actively patent in this space.

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 B43L?
CPC subclass B43L covers ARTICLES FOR WRITING OR DRAWING UPON; ; WRITING OR DRAWING AIDS;; ACCESSORIES FOR WRITING OR DRAWING. It belongs to CPC class B43 (WRITING OR DRAWING IMPLEMENTS; BUREAU ACCESSORIES). 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 B43L?
358 US utility patents were granted in CPC subclass B43L between 2015 and 2025, based on USPTO PatentsView data.
Which company holds the most patents in B43L?
SOCIÉTÉ BIC leads B43L with 11 patents, making it the most active assignee in this technology area.
How is patent data for B43L 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., B43) is a broad technology category. Subclasses like B43L 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