The filing and granting of patents, not to mention their litigation, are key to global economic development through encouraging and protecting entrepreneurial and inventive economic activity. However, surprisingly little investigation has been conducted of the filing of patents in the nuclear fusion industry in recent years, and even less of the patent filing activity of nuclear fusion's private sector. We analyse the patents filed by members of the US-based Fusion Industry Association (FIA), by company, year, and patent classification codes, in a way that will be of interest to academics, fusion companies and the overall fusion industry, public sector policy makers, and political decision makers. We find that the FIA now represents a considerable and varied body of intellectual property, with some FIA members beginning to demonstrate extensive patenting, especially in the case of spherical tokamak technology, including with patents for shielding materials and the tritium fuel cycle. These findings adds weight to the notion of a public-private partnership and cost-sharing approach to Fusion Pilot Plants, presently being advocated by the US National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, the US Department of Energy, and the FIA itself.

通过鼓励和保护企业家和创造性经济活动，专利的申请和授予，更不用说他们的诉讼，是全球经济发展的关键。然而，令人惊讶的是，近年来对核聚变行业专利申请的调查很少，核聚变私营部门的专利申请活动甚至更少。我们以学术界、聚变公司和整个聚变行业、公共部门感兴趣的方式，按公司、年份和专利分类代码分析美国聚变工业协会 (FIA) 成员提交的专利政策制定者和政治决策者。我们发现 FIA 现在代表了相当多的知识产权，一些 FIA 成员开始展示广泛的专利，特别是在球形托卡马克技术的情况下，包括屏蔽材料和氚燃料循环的专利。这些发现增加了公私合作伙伴关系和聚变试验工厂成本分摊方法的概念，目前美国国家科学院、工程院和医学院、美国能源部和 FIA 本身都在提倡。