Automotive Gear Design Patents: Top Companies & Filing Trends 2026
- Filing peaked in 2018 at 13 records and has not returned to that level since, with the 2022 midpoint sitting at just 3 — a flat-to-declining trend rather than a growing one.
- Claim activity concentrates in gear cutting B23F (gear and thread cutting) covers 121 of 145 records, dwarfing F16H gearing/transmission claims at 31 and signalling that process and tooling claims, not gear-train architecture, dominate this space.
- The United States leads filing offices at 45 records ahead of China at 31 and EPO at 23, with India and WIPO PCT each at 10 — a spread that argues for multi-jurisdiction defensive filing rather than a single home market.
Filing growth compares 2021 (1 records) with 2024 (3) — a three-year span. 2024 is the most recent year we treat as complete: publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, so 2025 onwards are still filling in and any growth rate that ends there would understate the field. Top-5 share is the combined record count of the five largest assignees divided by all 145 records in scope (CR5), not by the ranked leaders only.
What this landscape covers
This landscape tracks patent families filed against automotive gear design and manufacturing — tooth profile modification, gear accuracy grading, hobbing, case hardening and contact stress claims — across 145 total families published between 2017 and 2026. The search combines title/abstract keywords with IPC classes B23F, F16H55 and F16H57, isolating gear-cutting and gearing hardware from the broader powertrain literature. Publication lags filing by roughly eighteen months, so the 2026 figure in the trend line is necessarily incomplete and should not be read as a drop-off.
The dataset skews heavily toward machining and process claims rather than gear-train architecture: B23F gear-cutting classifications appear in the large majority of records, with milling (B23C), control systems (G05B) and machine tool fittings (B23Q) as secondary clusters. That composition matters for freedom-to-operate work — it means the densest prior art sits on how a gear is cut and finished, not on how it is arranged in a transmission.
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Filing trends and technology composition
The two views below read together: one shows when applicants filed, the other shows what they filed on. Neither alone explains the shape of the field.
A peak in 2018, then a plateau
Filings rose to 13 in 2018 and have since settled into a lower, flatter pattern — the 2022 midpoint of 3 records is representative of the post-peak baseline rather than an anomaly. That pattern is more consistent with a mature process technology being incrementally refined than with a technology attracting new entrants.
Gear-cutting process claims dominate
B23F accounts for 121 of 145 records, far ahead of F16H gearing/transmission claims (31), B23C milling (18) and G05B control systems (18). The tail — B23P general metalworking, G06F digital processing, B21H rolling — shows where claims exist but density is thin.
Shares are the percentage of the 145 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
Go deeper on Automotive Gear Design and Manufacturing with Eureka
This page is one run against one query. Ask Eureka your own question about automotive gear design and manufacturing and every answer comes back with the patent numbers behind it.
Try EurekaMost-cited records and a representative recent filing
Method for the gear manufacturing machining of a workpiece
The disclosure combines hobbing machining with gear skiving in the same workpiece process, generating gearing geometry through a hybrid cutting sequence rather than a single method.Filed by Liebherr-Verzahntechnik; granted 2021-05-04.
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | US6080199A | Gear designing method, gear manufacturing method, and gear manufactured by the same method | 70 |
| 2 | US3678557A | Method for making gear | 58 |
| 3 | US5310295A | Tool feeding method in gear manufacturing processes | 56 |
| 4 | US5136522A | Stock dividing method and apparatus for gear manufacturing machine | 49 |
| 5 | CN1931493A | 齿轮制造机器及其操作方法 | 23 |
| 6 | US20170008109A1 | Method of dressing a tool | 18 |
| 7 | US20090060672A1 | Multiple Operation Gear Manufacturing Apparatus With Common Work Axis | 16 |
| 8 | CN101244474A | 一种斜齿椭圆齿轮及斜齿非圆齿轮的数控滚齿加工方法 | 16 |
| 9 | US20150290725A1 | Gear Cutter With Radial Adjustability Of Stick Blades | 14 |
| 10 | KR1020130110673A | Tool for burr removing of hobbing machine | 14 |
Citation counts reward older, longer-indexed records; treat this as a map of documented influence, not of current commercial relevance.
Patent titles are shown in the language they were filed in, not translated, so that each record stays verifiable against the original filing — a translated title will not match in Eureka or in any national register. Each row carries its publication number; clicking a row searches Eureka by that number.
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Browse MCP servers →What the numbers mean for filing strategy
Three patterns stand out once family counts, IPC composition and geography are read together.
Growth is flat, not rising
The trend line peaked in 2018 and has not recovered. A midpoint reading of 3 records against a 13-record peak indicates this is a stable, incrementally-refined field rather than one drawing new capital or new entrants.
Process claims outweigh architecture claims
Gear and thread cutting (B23F) carries the large majority of records, well ahead of gearing/transmission hardware (F16H) at 31. Applicants are claiming how a gear is manufactured more than how a gear train is designed.
No single home jurisdiction
The United States leads but does not dominate; China and EPO both carry substantial volume, and India together with WIPO PCT (10 each) show meaningful secondary-market and route-to-multiple-jurisdiction filing.
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to automotive gear design and manufacturing, with the prior art for and against each one.
| Assignee | Co-assignee | Shared families |
|---|---|---|
| Toyota Motor Corporation | Toyota Central R&D Labs, Inc. | 9 |
| SUNAMI KIYOKAZU | SHIBATA YOSHIKATSU | 3 |
| SUNAMI KIYOKAZU | MIYAMURA HIROMI | 3 |
| SUNAMI KIYOKAZU | INAGAKI MIZUHO | 3 |
| SUNAMI KIYOKAZU | HONDA SHO | 3 |
| SUNAMI KIYOKAZU | AOYAMA TAKAYUKI | 3 |
| SHIBATA YOSHIKATSU | MIYAMURA HIROMI | 3 |
| SHIBATA YOSHIKATSU | INAGAKI MIZUHO | 3 |
Of 10 documented co-assignee pairs, the Toyota / Toyota Central R&D Labs pairing appears 9 times — far ahead of any other combination — indicating that most collaborative filing in this dataset runs through a single internal R&D relationship rather than cross-company joint development.
Who holds the claims, and where recent activity has gone quiet
Ranking by family count shows a cluster of established gear-cutting equipment and automotive manufacturers at the top; momentum data shows that cluster has gone quiet in the most recent year, which changes how a freedom-to-operate review should weight their portfolios.
A short list of repeat filers
The assignee ranking is built from the same 145 families as the trend chart, meaning the leaders shown there account for a disproportionate share of the corpus rather than one filing each.
Recent activity has gone quiet at the top
Every one of the most-active historical assignees — including Toyota, Toyota Central R&D Labs, Liebherr-Verzahntechnik, Gleason Works and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Machine Tool — shows zero filings in the latest tracked year, consistent with the broader plateau in the filing trend.
Internal R&D pairing, not cross-company JV
The strongest co-assignee link in the dataset sits inside one corporate family. Other pairings, such as Sunami Kiyokazu with Shibata Yoshikatsu or with Miyamura Hiromi, appear at much lower volume (3 each) and read as individual-inventor co-filings rather than institutional partnerships.
| Assignee | Recent year | YoY |
|---|---|---|
| Gleason Works | 0 | — |
| Liebherr-Verzahntechnik GmbH | 0 | — |
| Toyota Motor Corporation | 0 | — |
| Toyota Central R&D Labs, Inc. | 0 | — |
| Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Machine Tool Co., Ltd. | 0 | — |
| LEE KWANG HUI | 0 | — |
| Reishauer AG | 0 | — |
| Institute for Applied Science (public interest incorporated foundation) | 0 | — |
Where to take this next
The dataset points to specific follow-up work rather than a single conclusion.
Run a freedom-to-operate check on hobbing and skiving claims
With B23F carrying the bulk of records and a representative 2021 filing combining hobbing with gear skiving, any new cutting-process design should be checked against that cluster before development spend commits to a specific method sequence.
Explore this cluster in EurekaWatch for a re-acceleration signal
Because every top assignee shows zero filings in the latest year and publication lags filing by roughly eighteen months, a genuine pickup in activity would not be visible in this data yet — worth re-checking the trend in the next reporting cycle.
Track filing trends in EurekaScope the thin IPC branches before they fill in
B21H rolling, G06F digital processing and B23P general metalworking each carry single-digit-to-low-double-digit record counts inside this corpus, which is where a first-mover claim is more likely to clear cleanly.
Search white space in EurekaCommon questions on automotive gear patents
Within this 145-family dataset, the most active historical filers include Toyota and its affiliate Toyota Central R&D Labs, alongside gear-cutting equipment specialists such as Liebherr-Verzahntechnik, Gleason Works and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Machine Tool. Notably, every one of these leading assignees shows zero filings in the most recent tracked year, so the ranking reflects historical depth rather than current filing pace. Anyone using this list for competitive tracking should pair it with the recent-year momentum data rather than reading cumulative rank alone.
The trend in this dataset is flat to declining, not growing. Filings peaked at 13 records in 2018 and had fallen to a midpoint of 3 by 2022, and the top assignees all show no filings in the latest year. Because publication typically lags filing by about eighteen months, the most recent year is understated by definition, but the multi-year pattern before that point already shows a plateau rather than acceleration.
The dataset is dominated by gear and thread cutting processes, classified under IPC B23F, which accounts for 121 of the 145 records. Gearing and transmission hardware (F16H) is a distant second at 31 records, with milling (B23C) and control/regulating systems (G05B) each appearing in 18 records. This composition means the field is claimed primarily around how gears are cut, finished and controlled during manufacture, rather than around gear-train architecture itself.
US10994352B2, assigned to Liebherr-Verzahntechnik, covers a method for gear manufacturing machining that combines hobbing with gear skiving on the same workpiece to generate gearing geometry. It does not block hobbing alone or skiving alone as independent processes; the claim scope centers on the specific combination and sequencing of the two operations on one workpiece. A team developing a hobbing-only or skiving-only process, or one that combines them in a materially different sequence or control scheme, would need a claim-by-claim comparison rather than assuming blanket exclusion.
The thinnest IPC coverage in this corpus sits in B21H (cold rolling of metal articles, 5 records), G06F (digital data processing, 6 records) and B23P (general metalworking, 8 records) relative to the dominant B23F cluster of 121. That gap suggests under-claimed territory around digital tooth-contact simulation, cold-rolling gear forming and closed-loop process control integrated with gear cutting. These are process-adjacent branches rather than entirely new gear architectures, which is consistent with how concentrated the rest of the dataset is around manufacturing method claims.
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Disclaimer. This page is generated from Patsnap Eureka data drawn from a limited snapshot of global patent and scientific-literature records, and is provided for general information and reference only.
Patent data carries inherent limitations: recent filings (typically the most recent 18–24 months) are under-counted due to standard publication lag; counts may be reported at either a patent-family or a patent-record basis and are not always directly comparable; classification, applicant-name, and citation data may contain errors, duplicates, or omissions; and the underlying search query defines and constrains the scope shown. As a result, the analysis may be incomplete or inaccurate and may not reflect the full technology landscape.
Nothing on this page constitutes an exhaustive prior-art, novelty, freedom-to-operate, or validity search, nor does it constitute legal, financial, investment, or professional advice, and it should not be relied upon as such. Any patent, commercial, or strategic decision should be verified independently and reviewed with qualified patent, legal, and domain professionals. Patsnap makes no warranties, express or implied, as to the accuracy, completeness, or fitness for any particular purpose of the information presented.
Machine translation. Assignee and organisation names originally recorded in Chinese, Japanese or Korean have been rendered into English by an AI translation step so that the tables stay readable. These renderings are best-effort and may not match a company’s registered English name; the original name is what the underlying patent record carries, and it is what any Eureka query launched from this page uses.