CPC technology class · F02

F02F — Cylinders

Cylinders, pistons or casings, for combustion engines; arrangements of sealings in combustion engines. 2,743 US utility patents granted 2015–2025, with the leading assignees and year-by-year filing trajectory.

2,743
US patents granted
F02
Parent CPC class
20
Active assignees
-12%
5-yr velocity
Top assignee: Ford Global Technologies, LLC (217 patents)

CPC subclass F02F — CYLINDERS, PISTONS OR CASINGS, FOR COMBUSTION ENGINES; ARRANGEMENTS OF SEALINGS IN COMBUSTION ENGINES — covers 2,743 US utility patents granted between 2015 and 2025 according to USPTO PatentsView records. This subclass sits within the broader CPC class F02 (COMBUSTION ENGINES; HOT-GAS OR COMBUSTION-PRODUCT ENGINE PLANTS), 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 F02F 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 F02F is shaped by 20 distinct companies actively filing in this space. Ford Global Technologies, LLC leads with 217 patents, followed by Caterpillar Inc. at 4,178 grants and MAZDA MOTOR CORPORATION at 1,922. 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 F02F 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 F02F innovation accelerating?

US utility-patent grants per year in F02F, 2015–2025 — recent five years are down 12% versus 2015–2019.

0100200300400500 20152016201720182019202020212022202320242025 72

Who leads F02F?

The 12 most active assignees in CYLINDERS, PISTONS OR CASINGS, FOR COMBUSTION ENGINES; ARRANGEMENTS OF SEALINGS IN COMBUSTION ENGINES — wider bars mean more grants

patents

What this shows Ford Global is the most active filer in F02F, holding 217 of the 2,743 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 F02F belongs to class F02.

2,743 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 F02F?
CPC subclass F02F covers CYLINDERS, PISTONS OR CASINGS, FOR COMBUSTION ENGINES; ARRANGEMENTS OF SEALINGS IN COMBUSTION ENGINES. It belongs to CPC class F02 (COMBUSTION ENGINES; HOT-GAS OR COMBUSTION-PRODUCT ENGINE PLANTS). 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 F02F?
2,743 US utility patents were granted in CPC subclass F02F between 2015 and 2025, based on USPTO PatentsView data.
Which company holds the most patents in F02F?
Ford Global Technologies, LLC leads F02F with 217 patents, making it the most active assignee in this technology area.
How is patent data for F02F 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., F02) is a broad technology category. Subclasses like F02F 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