Coiled Tubing Patents: Who Leads, Where the Gaps Are 2026
- Concentrated at the top. Five assignees hold 40.1% of all 932 records in scope, and ten hold 56.8% — a small group controls the core claim space around injectors, guide arches and bending-fatigue methods.
- Filing has cooled from its peak. Activity peaked in 2018 at 54 filings and fell from 46 in 2021 to 15 in 2024, a 67% drop over that span, though 2025-2026 figures are still filling in under normal publication lag.
- One subclass dominates. E21B (earth and rock drilling) appears on 80.3% of records, while corrosion (C23F), materials handling (B65H) and winches (B66D) each sit under 8% — signalling where claim space is thin, not settled.
Filing growth compares 2021 (46 records) with 2024 (15) — 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 932 records in scope (CR5), not by the ranked leaders only.
What this landscape covers
This landscape tracks 932 published patent records filed or published between 2015 and mid-2026 that combine coiled tubing hardware — injectors, tubing reels, guide arches — with specific technical failure and performance modes: bending fatigue life, ovality growth, lockup depth, internal corrosion and coiled tubing milling. The search string deliberately pairs equipment terms with these mechanistic terms, so the set skews toward records that engage with how coiled tubing degrades and is guided into a wellbore, rather than every general coiled-tubing filing.
Records span multiple receiving offices, with the United States, Canada and the WIPO PCT route carrying the largest shares, followed by Europe, the United Kingdom and Australia. That spread reflects coiled tubing's use in North American unconventional wells alongside international well-intervention markets.
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Filing trends and technology composition
Two views of the same 932-record set: how filing activity has moved year over year, and which IPC subclasses the records actually sit in.
Filing trend: a 2018 peak, then a pullback
Filings rose to a peak of 54 in 2018, then declined; the 2021-to-2024 window alone shows a drop from 46 to 15 filings, a 67% fall. Because publication typically lags filing by around 18 months, the 2025 and 2026 counts (down to 1 in 2026) are still incomplete and should not be read as a continued decline.
Technology composition: E21B dominates, the rest is thin
E21B (earth and rock drilling for wells) covers 80.3% of the 932 records, consistent with coiled tubing's core identity as a well-servicing technology. F16L (pipes and fittings), C09K (materials), C23F (corrosion), B65H (web/filament handling), G01N (testing), G01V (geophysics) and B66D (winches) each cover under 8% of records, which is where narrower, more defensible claims tend to sit.
Shares are the percentage of the 932 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
Go deeper on Coiled Tubing Strings and Equipment with Eureka
This page is one run against one query. Ask Eureka your own question about coiled tubing strings and equipment and every answer comes back with the patent numbers behind it.
Try EurekaMost-cited records and a recent filing
US20260110225A1 — Coiled tubing injector system including a trolley track and trolley for support thereof
A coiled tubing injector system and a well system are disclosed. The system includes a coiled tubing frame, a coiled tubing injector positioned within the frame to place a coiled tubing string into a wellbore, and a coiled tubing guide arch aligned with the injector to guide the string into it. The described trolley track and trolley arrangement supports these components on the frame.Filed by Halliburton Energy Services, Inc.; published 2026-04-23.
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | US6868906B1 | Closed-loop conveyance systems for well servicing | 201 |
| 2 | US6397946B1 | Closed-loop system to compete oil and gas wells | 191 |
| 3 | US5411085A | Spoolable coiled tubing completion system | 181 |
| 4 | US6158516A | Combined drilling apparatus and method | 180 |
| 5 | US5842530A | Hybrid coiled tubing/conventional drilling unit | 138 |
| 6 | US20130026978A1 | Power supply for downhole instruments | 125 |
| 7 | US6116345A | Tubing injection systems for oilfield operations | 118 |
| 8 | US7165619B2 | Subsea intervention system, method and components thereof | 117 |
| 9 | US6276454B1 | Tubing injection systems for oilfield operations | 107 |
| 10 | US20150107824A1 | Power system for downhole toolstring | 101 |
Citation counts favour older records simply because they have had more time to be cited; treat them as a signal of influence within this corpus, not of current commercial importance.
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Browse MCP servers →What the numbers mean for a filing decision
Three read-throughs from the concentration, trend and technology data above.
A small group controls the core claims
With five assignees holding 40.1% of all 932 records and ten holding 56.8%, the foundational injector, guide-arch and reel mechanisms are well staked out. New entrants competing head-on for these core mechanical claims face dense prior art from a handful of established oilfield-services players.
A cooling filing cycle, not a dead one
Filings dropped from 46 in 2021 to 15 in 2024, following a 2018 peak of 54. That decline tracks broader cycles in well-intervention capital spending; it does not by itself indicate the technology is exhausted, since publication lag means 2025-2026 filings are still arriving.
Claim density sits almost entirely in one class
E21B carries the large majority of records, while corrosion (C23F, 4.5%), filament handling (B65H, 3.9%) and winches (B66D, 3.0%) are comparatively lightly claimed. Filers looking for less contested ground should look at these adjacent subclasses rather than the core drilling class.
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to coiled tubing strings and equipment, with the prior art for and against each one.
Who holds the ground, and where it's open
The ranked leaders sit almost entirely inside major oilfield-services companies, with citation and co-filing patterns pointing to close corporate ties between related entities of the same groups.
One filer well ahead of the field
The leading assignee holds 173 records, more than four times the fifth-place count of 41 and nearly seven times the tenth-place count of 25 — a steep drop-off that marks this as a leader-and-long-tail structure rather than an even spread.
Corporate-family filing is common
The strongest co-assignee pairs link entities that are affiliates of the same corporate group, filing jointly across related subsidiaries. This pattern is typical where a single R&D organisation files under multiple registered entities across jurisdictions.
Recent-year activity has gone quiet across the board
Every one of the most active historical assignees shows zero filings in the latest tracked year. Given the roughly 18-month publication lag, this reads as a reporting gap rather than a genuine stop in R&D activity, but it means recent competitive momentum cannot yet be judged from published data.
| Assignee | Recent year | YoY |
|---|---|---|
| Halliburton Energy Services, Inc. | 0 | — |
| STIMLINE | 0 | — |
| Ecolab USA Inc. | 0 | — |
| Schlumberger Technology Corp. | 0 | — |
| FastCap Systems Corp. | 0 | — |
| Schlumberger Technology B.V. | 0 | — |
| Baker Hughes Holdings LLC | 0 | — |
| National Oilwell Varco, L.P. | 0 | — |
Where to take this analysis
The dataset points to a few concrete next steps depending on what a reader needs to decide.
Map claims against the leader's portfolio
Before filing in the core injector or guide-arch space, check how the leading assignee's 173 records overlap with a planned claim — dense coverage there means designing around established mechanisms rather than through them.
Explore the assignee ranking →Test the under-claimed branches
Corrosion monitoring, fatigue-life estimation and ovality measurement each sit under 8% of records; a narrowly drafted claim in one of these areas has a better chance of standing clear of the dense E21B core.
Run a white-space search in Eureka →Watch for the 2025-2026 publication catch-up
Because the most recent two years are still filling in, re-check the trend once later publications land before concluding the field has genuinely slowed.
Set a monitoring alert →Common questions about coiled tubing patents
This landscape identifies 932 published patent records filed or published between 2015 and mid-2026 that combine coiled tubing hardware terms with specific technical failure or performance modes such as bending fatigue life, ovality growth and internal corrosion. The true worldwide total for coiled tubing generally is larger, since this set is scoped to records that engage with those mechanistic terms rather than every coiled-tubing filing. Patent families, not raw document counts, are the fairer unit for comparing filing activity across jurisdictions.
The ranking covers 100 companies, and it is concentrated: the top five hold 40.1% of all 932 records and the top ten hold 56.8%. One assignee leads clearly with 173 records, well ahead of the fifth-ranked company at 41 and the tenth at 25. This structure — a dominant leader plus a long tail of smaller filers — is typical of oilfield-services equipment categories with high capital costs of R&D.
Filing activity peaked in 2018 at 54 records and has generally declined since, with the 2021-to-2024 window showing a drop from 46 to 15 filings, a 67% fall. However, because patent publication typically lags actual filing by around 18 months, the very recent years in any dataset understate true activity, so the apparent drop to 2025-2026 counts should not be read as the field going quiet. 2024 is the most recent year that can be treated as reasonably complete.
The overwhelming majority of records, 80.3% of the 932 in scope, fall under IPC subclass E21B covering earth and rock drilling for wells, reflecting coiled tubing's core role in well servicing. Narrower areas like pipe and pipe fittings (F16L, 7.8%), corrosion and metal removal (C23F, 4.5%), web and filament handling (B65H, 3.9%) and winches (B66D, 3.0%) are far less densely claimed. Because a single record can carry multiple IPC codes, these shares add up to more than 100%, and they point to where claim space is comparatively open.
The lightest-claimed technical branches relative to the dominant drilling class include ovality growth measurement, lockup-depth prediction, internal corrosion monitoring, bending-fatigue life estimation and coiled tubing milling tool design, each sitting well under 8% of the 932 records. These are narrower, more instrumentation- and materials-oriented areas rather than the core mechanical injector or guide-arch hardware, which is where the leading assignees already hold dense coverage. A first claim in one of these branches should target a specific measurement method or failure-mode threshold rather than the general apparatus.
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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.