CPC technology class · F04

F04D — Non-positive-displacement Pumps

Non-positive-displacement pumps. 16,174 US utility patents granted 2015–2025, with the leading assignees and year-by-year filing trajectory.

16,174
US patents granted
F04
Parent CPC class
20
Active assignees
+35%
5-yr velocity
Top assignee: General Electric Company (654 patents)

CPC subclass F04D — NON-POSITIVE-DISPLACEMENT PUMPS — covers 16,174 US utility patents granted between 2015 and 2025 according to USPTO PatentsView records. This subclass sits within the broader CPC class F04 (POSITIVE - DISPLACEMENT MACHINES FOR LIQUIDS; PUMPS FOR LIQUIDS OR ELASTIC FLUIDS), 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 F04D 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 F04D is shaped by 20 distinct companies actively filing in this space. General Electric Company leads with 654 patents, followed by UNITED TECHNOLOGIES CORPORATION at 4,091 grants and RAYTHEON TECHNOLOGIES CORPORATION at 2,501. 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 F04D 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 F04D innovation accelerating?

US utility-patent grants per year in F04D, 2015–2025 — recent five years are up 35% versus 2015–2019.

5001,0001,5002,0002,500 20152016201720182019202020212022202320242025 998

Who leads F04D?

The 12 most active assignees in NON-POSITIVE-DISPLACEMENT PUMPS — wider bars mean more grants

patents

What this shows General Electric is the most active filer in F04D, holding 654 of the 16,174 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 F04D belongs to class F04.

16,174 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 F04D?
CPC subclass F04D covers NON-POSITIVE-DISPLACEMENT PUMPS. It belongs to CPC class F04 (POSITIVE - DISPLACEMENT MACHINES FOR LIQUIDS; PUMPS FOR LIQUIDS OR ELASTIC FLUIDS). 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 F04D?
16,174 US utility patents were granted in CPC subclass F04D between 2015 and 2025, based on USPTO PatentsView data.
Which company holds the most patents in F04D?
General Electric Company leads F04D with 654 patents, making it the most active assignee in this technology area.
How is patent data for F04D 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., F04) is a broad technology category. Subclasses like F04D 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