Patents as a Lens on Process Choice: A Comparative Patent-Landscape Analysis of Shot Peen Forming and Creep Age Forming in Metallic Aircraft Wing-Cover Manufacture

<jats:p>Shot peen forming and creep age forming (CAF) are the two dominant industrial routes for generating contour in metallic aircraft wing covers, and both have been treated extensively in the peer-reviewed process-mechanics literature. Neither, however, has been the subject of a dedicated patent-landscape analysis in which the patent record itself, rather than the underlying mechanics, is the unit of study. Using a classification-anchored search (CPC B24C 1/10, C21D 7/06 and C21D 9/50 for shot peen forming; keyword-anchored retrieval cross-checked against known assignees for CAF, which lacks an equivalently settled classification), we assemble comparative patent corpora for the two processes spanning the 1950s to the present. We analyse filing-rate timelines, assignee and geographic clustering, and claim-scope evolution, showing that the two processes exhibit structurally different patenting behaviour: shot peen forming shows a long, continuous filing history with incremental claim-scope broadening, while CAF shows a concentrated Western filing burst in the 1990s, a two-decade dormancy, and a renewed, geographically distinct burst of Chinese institutional filings from the 2010s onward. Within CAF's recent activity we identify three independently emerging approaches to cycle-time acceleration — mechanical/vibrational, ultrasonic, and electric-pulse assistance — each patented by a different class of actor with limited cross-citation, and we trace the recent convergence of the CAF and shot-peen-forming lineages in hybrid electric-pulse/laser-peening claims. We argue that patent activity, read as a proxy for perceived industrial difficulty rather than evidence of production use, offers an analytical layer distinct from and complementary to existing process-mechanics reviews of both technologies.</jats:p>