Fastest
Eureka on the web
When you want the answer in the next five minutes.
The agent works the prompt against patents and technical literature, citing every source.
Run your analysis now →https://www.patsnap.com/resources/blog/rd-blog/bearing-and-gear-lubrication-regimes-patent-landscape/ · Patsnap · data cut-off 2026-07-31 · downloaded from the live page
Patent Landscape · Updated 2026Bearing and Gear Lubrication Regimes: Who Holds the Patents
- Sharp acceleration, not a mature field. Filings ran from 1 in 2021 to 8 in 2024, a +700% rise over three years, with 2025 the peak year so far at 11.
- Leadership is thin, not dominant. The top 5 assignees hold 45.5% of all 55 records in scope; the leader alone accounts for 6 records out of 47 ranked companies.
- Filing is concentrated in one office. China accounts for 31 of the tracked filings, well ahead of the United States at 7 and the EPO at 5.
55
Published Records
45%
Top-5 Share of All Records
+700%
Filing Growth 2021→2024
CN
Leading Jurisdiction
Filing growth compares 2021 (1 records) with 2024 (8) — 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 55 records in scope (CR5), not by the ranked leaders only.
Published byPatsnap Research··6 min readSourced from Patsnap Eureka
Overview
What this landscape covers
This landscape tracks patent families whose titles or abstracts describe bearing lubrication regime or elastohydrodynamic lubrication work, narrowed to records claiming film thickness, surface roughness ratio, lubricant starvation, churning loss, grease bleed or operating temperature. The scope spans publications from 2015 through the 2026-07-31 data cut-off, covering 55 records in total.
Because publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, the most recent filing years understate real activity; treat 2024 as the last year with a reasonably complete count and read 2025-2026 as still filling in.
Filing activity and technology composition, 2015-2026
Source: Patsnap Eureka. Assignee ranking and totals. Derived from a Patsnap search on Bearing and Gear Lubrication Regimes covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-07-31. Counts reflect published records only and shift as new filings publish.Run this in Eureka MCP
Let an AI agent run this analysis on your own technology
Pick a task. Every answer cites the patents behind it.
10,000 free credits to start
The Numbers
Filing trend and technology mix
Two views of the same 55 records: how filing activity has moved year on year, and which IPC subclasses carry the claims.
Filing trend
Filings sat near zero through 2017 and climbed steadily to 8 in 2024, a +700% increase over that three-year span; 2025 posted 11 published records, the highest so far, though later years will keep revising upward as publications catch up to filing dates.
Technology composition
G06F (electric digital data processing) appears on 58.2% of the 55 records, ahead of F16C (shafts, bearings & couplings) at 20.0% and F16H (gearing & transmissions) at 10.9%; smaller shares fall to grinding and polishing (B24B), gear cutting (B23F), valve gear (F01L) and test/measurement classes. Because records carry multiple classes, these shares sum to more than 100% of the record total.
Shares are the percentage of the 55 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
Source: Patsnap Eureka. Filing trend and technology composition. Derived from a Patsnap search on Bearing and Gear Lubrication Regimes covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-07-31. Counts reflect published records only and shift as new filings publish.
Go deeper on Bearing and Gear Lubrication Regimes with Eureka
This page is one run against one query. Ask Eureka your own question about bearing and gear lubrication regimes and every answer comes back with the patent numbers behind it.
Try EurekaKey Patents
Representative filing and most-cited records
Representative Filing
Active determination and precision machining for a hydrodynamic oil-film worm-gear pair (Chongqing University, 2025)
CHONGQING UNIVERSITY
The filing builds a three-dimensional digital model of a modification tooth surface for a worm-gear pair that accounts for rough morphology, then layers a cross-scale meshing contact analysis and a three-dimensional contact thermal elastohydrodynamic lubrication model over it. The stated objectives are friction coefficient, oil film thickness, oil film pressure and friction force, solved jointly rather than treated as separate design targets.Filed by Chongqing University; published as EP4585830A1 on 2025-07-16.
Most-cited records in this landscape
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | US3952566A | Bearing and lubricant film test method and apparatus | 60 |
| 2 | US20100266423A1 | System and Method for Pump with Deformable Bearing Surface | 39 |
| 3 | US5636708A | Method and device for broad temperature range vapor lubrication | 27 |
| 4 | US8167593B2 | System and method for pump with deformable bearing surface | 23 |
| 5 | US5584360A | Method for broad temperature range lubrication with vapors | 12 |
| 6 | US3781071A | Elastohydrodynamic bearing assembly | 12 |
| 7 | US5186135A | Valve stem topographical optimization process | 6 |
| 8 | CN118468477A | 齿轮混合润滑压力分布计算方法、电子设备及存储介质 | 5 |
| 9 | KR1020130081128A | Method for designing tapered roller bearing using elastohydrodynamic lubrication | 5 |
| 10 | EP4585830A1 | Active determination method and precision machining method for hydrodynamic oil film worm-gear pair | 4 |
Citation counts favour older documents inside any searched corpus; read them as a signal of influence, not of current technical 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.
Source: Patsnap Eureka. Citation counts and representative records. Derived from a Patsnap search on Bearing and Gear Lubrication Regimes covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-07-31. Counts reflect published records only and shift as new filings publish.Run this in Eureka MCP
Run it yourself
Put your own technology through the same analysis
Where to run it
For builders
MCP server & REST API
When it has to run inside your own pipeline.
Patent search, landscape analysis and assignee resolution as MCP tools. Drop them into any agent framework, or call REST directly.
Browse MCP servers →Insights
What the data means for filing strategy
Three findings that shape where a new filing would sit relative to existing claims.
Concentration
45.5% of 55
top 5 combined share
The top of the field is not a monopoly
Five assignees hold 45.5% of all 55 records, and the leader alone sits at 6 records. That leaves more than half the corpus spread across a long tail of single- or few-filing entrants, including universities and individual inventors, so a well-drafted claim is unlikely to face a single blocking incumbent.
Based on the full 47-company ranking.
Momentum
+700%
2021 → 2024 filings
Activity is recent and still rising
Filings moved from 1 in 2021 to 8 in 2024. 2025 posted 11 published records, the highest year on record, though publication lag means the 2025-2026 count will keep revising upward rather than signalling a slowdown.
Treat 2024 as the last complete year.
Composition
58.2% of 55
G06F share of records
Digital processing dominates the claim language
Over half the records carry a G06F classification alongside the mechanical bearing and gearing classes (F16C, F16H), pointing to lubrication regime work increasingly framed as sensing, modelling or control claims rather than pure mechanical design.
Classes overlap; shares sum above 100%.
Eureka AI Agent
Looking for what nobody has claimed yet?
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to bearing and gear lubrication regimes, with the prior art for and against each one.
Source: Patsnap Eureka. Co-assignee relationships and derived observations. Derived from a Patsnap search on Bearing and Gear Lubrication Regimes covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-07-31. Counts reflect published records only and shift as new filings publish.Run this in Eureka MCP
Players
Who is filing, and where the gaps sit
The ranked assignee list spans 47 companies, from a single leader at 6 records down to single-filing entrants. Recent-year momentum has largely gone flat across the named leaders, which is consistent with the corpus still filling in for 2025-2026 rather than a genuine drop-off.
Leader
6 records
top-ranked assignee
A modest lead, not a moat
The top assignee holds 6 of the 55 records in scope, a lead measured in single digits over the field. No single filer's momentum in the latest tracked year shows sustained growth, which is more likely a publication-lag artefact than a real pullback.
Fifth place holds 4 records, tenth place holds 2.
Geography
31 of 55
China-origin filings
Filing activity is centred on Chinese offices
China accounts for 31 of the tracked records, versus 7 at the United States, 5 at the EPO, 3 each at South Korea and WIPO, and 2 at Austria. Strategy built only around US or EPO prior art will miss most of the active filing base here.
Receiving office counts, not applicant nationality.
Collaboration
10 pairs
co-assignee relationships
Co-filing is limited and concentrated
Ten co-assignee pairs appear across the corpus, with one pairing between two organisations reaching 5 shared records and a university-inventor pairing appearing twice. Most of the field files independently rather than in joint programmes.
Strongest pair: 5 shared records.
Recent-year filing momentum by assignee
| Assignee | Recent year | YoY |
|---|---|---|
| Northeastern University (China) | 1 | 0% |
| REM Technology Inc. | 0 | — |
| OSRO GmbH | 0 | — |
| AB SKF | 0 | — |
| Chongqing University | 0 | -100% |
| Board of Regents of the University of Texas System | 0 | — |
| Harbin Engineering University | 0 | — |
| Université Jean Monnet | 0 | — |
Source: Patsnap Eureka. Assignee-level momentum. Derived from a Patsnap search on Bearing and Gear Lubrication Regimes covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-07-31. Counts reflect published records only and shift as new filings publish.Run this in Eureka MCP
What's Next
Where to take this analysis
The dataset points to specific next steps depending on whether the goal is freedom-to-operate, licensing or new filing.
Check claim scope on the leading assignee's family
With the top filer holding only 6 of 55 records, a claim-by-claim review of that family is tractable and worth doing before assuming broad blocking coverage.
Run a claim comparison in EurekaMap the under-claimed sub-areas against your own roadmap
Grease bleed modelling, churning loss geometry and in-situ roughness sensing carry few records here; a first-filed claim in one of these is more defensible than crowding F16C.
Explore white space in EurekaTrack the 2025-2026 filings as they publish
Because publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, the current peak year understates real activity; revisit this trend in two to three quarters for a fuller picture.
Set up monitoring in EurekaSource: Patsnap Eureka. Forward-looking reading of the same dataset. Derived from a Patsnap search on Bearing and Gear Lubrication Regimes covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-07-31. Counts reflect published records only and shift as new filings publish.Run this in Eureka MCP
FAQ
Common questions on this landscape
The ranked list covers 47 companies, and the leader holds 6 of the 55 records in scope, with fifth place at 4 and tenth place at 2. That is a shallow lead rather than a dominant position: the top 5 combined hold 45.5% of all records, leaving more than half the field to a long tail of single- or few-filing entrants including universities and individual inventors. No single assignee controls the space outright, so a freedom-to-operate review needs to check several mid-ranked families, not just the top name.
Filing has grown sharply and recently: from 1 record in 2021 to 8 in 2024, a +700% increase over three years, with 2025 posting 11 published records, the highest year so far. Because publication typically lags filing by around 18 months, the 2025 and 2026 counts are still incomplete and should not be read as a plateau or decline. Treat 2024 as the most recent year with a reliable count when judging momentum.
G06F, electric digital data processing, appears on 58.2% of the 55 records, ahead of F16C (shafts, bearings and couplings) at 20.0% and F16H (gearing and transmissions) at 10.9%. Smaller but present classes include grinding and polishing (B24B), gear cutting (B23F), valve gear (F01L) and testing/measurement (G01M). The heavy G06F presence suggests much of the recent claim activity frames lubrication regimes through sensing, modelling or control rather than purely mechanical design, which matters when scoping a search or a design-around.
Sub-areas such as grease bleed rate modelling, churning loss reduction geometry, lubricant starvation onset detection and in-situ surface roughness ratio sensing carry comparatively few records relative to the dense F16C and F16H clusters. These sit adjacent to the crowded mechanical bearing and gearing claims but are not yet heavily staked out. A first claim drafted around a specific detection or modelling method in one of these areas is likely to face less crowded prior art than a general elastohydrodynamic film thickness claim.
China leads by a wide margin with 31 of the 55 tracked records, followed by the United States at 7 and the EPO at 5. South Korea and WIPO (PCT) each account for 3, and Austria for 2. Any competitive or freedom-to-operate review limited to US and European prior art alone will miss the majority of active filing in this space, since China represents more than half of all records in scope.
Answers are grounded in the same dataset. Derived from a Patsnap search on Bearing and Gear Lubrication Regimes covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-07-31. Counts reflect published records only and shift as new filings publish.Run this in Eureka MCP
Research Bearing and Gear Lubrication Regimes in depth with Eureka
Go past this page: query the whole bearing and gear lubrication regimes corpus yourself, in your own scope.
Every answer comes back with patent numbers you can open.
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.