Combine Harvester Patents: Top Companies & Filing Trends 2026
- Concentrated at the top. The five largest filers account for 68.5% of all 699 records in scope, and the top ten hold 83.4%.
- Filing has cooled since 2018. Activity peaked at 56 records that year and had fallen back toward 2017 levels by the middle of the trend window, with the leading assignees showing no filings in the latest year.
- Two IPC classes dominate the claim space. A01F (threshing and crop processing) and A01D (harvesting and mowing) cover 68.2% and 59.8% of records respectively, while sensing- and imaging-related classes each sit under 3%.
What this landscape covers
This dataset tracks patent filings at the intersection of combine harvesters and threshing systems — machines and subsystems built around grain separation, cleaning, and loss monitoring. The search combines title/abstract terms for combine harvesters, threshing systems and grain separation harvesters with technical-content matches on grain loss monitoring, threshing drum design, cleaning shoe mechanisms, yield mapping and automatic header control, restricted to IPC classes A01D41, A01F12 and A01D75. The result is 699 published records spanning 2015 through the 2026 data cut-off.
Because publication typically lags filing by around 18 months, figures for the most recent year or two understate real filing activity and should be read as a floor, not a ceiling. Patent families, rather than raw document counts, are used for the assignee ranking so that continuation filings and multi-jurisdiction duplicates in the same invention do not inflate any single company's position.
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Filing trend and technology composition
Two views of the same 699-record corpus: how filing volume has moved year over year, and how those records distribute across IPC subclasses.
Filing trend: a 2018 peak followed by a plateau
Filings rose to 32 in 2017 and peaked at 56 in 2018, the high point of the window. By the 2022 midpoint, annual volume had fallen back to 25 — roughly half the peak — and the leading assignees show no filings at all in the latest tracked year, a pattern consistent with either genuine slowdown or the normal reporting lag rather than a sudden exit from the field.
Technology composition: mechanical classes still dominate
A01F (threshing and crop processing) and A01D (harvesting and mowing) between them cover the large majority of records, confirming that most patent activity still sits on core mechanical separation and header functions rather than on sensing or software layers. Classes tied to monitoring and control — B07B sieving, G01N material analysis, G05B/G05D control systems, G06T image processing and H04N pictorial communication — each account for under 4% of records, marking them as comparatively thin claim territory relative to the mechanical core.
Shares are the percentage of the 699 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
Go deeper on Combine Harvesters and Threshing Systems with Eureka
This page is one run against one query. Ask Eureka your own question about combine harvesters and threshing systems and every answer comes back with the patent numbers behind it.
Try EurekaMost-cited records and a representative filing
Combine harvester self-adaptive cleaning control apparatus and self-adaptive cleaning method thereof
A combine harvester self-adaptive cleaning control apparatus, includes a return plate, a cleaning sieve, a cleaning centrifugal blower, an impurity collection and stirring auger, a grain collection and stirring auger, a cleaning grain loss monitoring sensor, a grain tank grain impurity rate automatic monitoring apparatus, and an on-line monitoring and control system. The on-line monitoring and control system is connected to the cleaning centrifugal blower, the cleaning grain loss monitoring sensor, the grain tank grain impurity rate automatic monitoring apparatus, and a power driving mechanism of a louver sieve having an adjustable opening.Filed by Jiangsu University, published 2018-02-01.
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | US20180271015A1 | Combine Harvester Including Machine Feedback Control | 168 |
| 2 | US20200084966A1 | Grain quality control system and method | 127 |
| 3 | US20100071329A1 | Control system for an agricultural harvesting machine | 110 |
| 4 | US20180359919A1 | Combine harvester control interface for operator and/or remote user | 103 |
| 5 | US4897071A | Combine harvester cleaning apparatus | 103 |
| 6 | US20180359917A1 | Remote control of settings on a combine harvester | 92 |
| 7 | US10310455B2 | Combine harvester control and communication system | 89 |
| 8 | US10412889B2 | Combine harvester control information for a remote user with visual feed | 82 |
| 9 | US6251009B1 | Straw chopper housing | 79 |
| 10 | US10437243B2 | Combine harvester control interface for operator and/or remote user | 77 |
Citation counts reward older filings that have had more time to accumulate citations within the searched corpus; read them as a signal of influence on later filers, not as a ranking of current technical importance.
Each row carries its publication number; clicking a row searches Eureka by that number.
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Browse MCP servers →What the data means for filing strategy
Three patterns stand out once the raw counts are put next to each other: where filing is dense, where it is thin, and where it has stalled.
The mechanical core is claimed by a small group
Five companies account for more than two-thirds of all records in scope, and the top ten push that to 83.4%. New entrants filing on core threshing drum or cleaning shoe mechanics are filing directly against the densest prior art in the field.
Filing activity has flattened, not accelerated
The leading assignees show no recorded filings in the latest tracked year, and the field's peak sits several years back. Given normal publication lag, this reads as a genuine slowdown in mechanical claims rather than a data artefact alone.
Sensing and control layers are comparatively open
Image processing, video-based monitoring and non-electric control classes each sit at or below 3% of records. That gap sits alongside a mechanical core that is heavily filed, suggesting more room to claim around how grain loss and quality are sensed and acted on than around the separation hardware itself.
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to combine harvesters and threshing systems, with the prior art for and against each one.
Who holds the ground, and where it opens up
A short list of equipment manufacturers accounts for most filings, but the concentration is narrower than it first appears once co-filing and momentum are factored in.
One filer sits well ahead of the field
The top assignee holds more than double the fifth-place count of 50 records, and its filings anchor the top-5 concentration figure. Even so, its latest-year filing count is flat, in line with the field-wide slowdown.
Cross-entity filing is limited but concentrated
The strongest co-assignee pair links two large equipment groups on shared filings, while a handful of university partnerships appear at smaller scale. This suggests joint filings cluster around a few established industry-academic relationships rather than being widespread.
No leading filer shows recent-year growth
Every assignee tracked for year-over-year momentum shows zero filings in the latest year, with some down 100% from the prior year. Read this against the 18-month publication lag before concluding the field is contracting outright.
| Assignee | Recent year | YoY |
|---|---|---|
| Deere & Co. | 0 | — |
| AGCO International GmbH | 0 | -100% |
| CNH Industrial Belgium NV | 0 | — |
| AGCO Corp. | 0 | -100% |
| CNH Industrial America LLC | 0 | — |
| AGCO AS | 0 | — |
| Sperry Corp. | 0 | — |
| SPERRY TOP-SIDER | 0 | — |
Where to take this next
The trend and concentration figures point to a mechanically mature, sensor-thin field. Two directions follow from that.
Map the sensing and control gap in detail
G01N, G05B, G05D, G06T and H04N together cover under 10% of records individually, but grain loss monitoring, automatic header control and yield mapping all sit in the search scope. A finer-grained pull on those specific claim elements would show whether the gap is real or just under-classified.
Explore this in EurekaWatch for a filing rebound as sensing modernises
Flat recent-year momentum among leading assignees, combined with a mechanically saturated core, is consistent with firms holding position while newer sensing and control approaches mature elsewhere before being folded into combine platforms.
Track assignee activity in EurekaCommon questions about this landscape
Filing in this space is concentrated among a small number of large agricultural equipment manufacturers. The leading assignee holds 202 of the 699 records in scope, and the top five combined account for 68.5% of all records. Beyond the top ten, which together hold 83.4% of records, the ranking of 76 assignees thins into a long tail of smaller filers with only a handful of records each.
Filing peaked at 56 records in 2018 and had fallen to 25 by the 2022 midpoint of the tracked window, and the leading assignees show no recorded filings in the most recent year. Because publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, the very latest years always look thinner than they eventually will, but the multi-year decline from the 2018 peak looks like a genuine slowdown rather than a reporting artefact alone.
The overwhelming majority of records sit in A01F (threshing and crop processing, 68.2% of records) and A01D (harvesting and mowing, 59.8%), reflecting a field still centred on mechanical separation and header hardware. Sensing- and software-adjacent classes such as image processing, video monitoring and control systems each cover 3% or less of records, marking a much thinner claim base around digital monitoring layers.
The clearest gap sits between the heavily filed mechanical core and the thinly filed sensing and control layer. Grain loss sensor fusion, automatic header height control, yield-mapping data pipelines and image-based grain quality grading each fall inside classes that individually cover 3% or less of the 699 records, despite being named directly in the search scope. That combination of low filing density and clear technical relevance is what marks these as under-claimed rather than simply out of scope.
This Jiangsu University filing, published 2018-02-01, claims a self-adaptive cleaning control apparatus that ties a cleaning grain loss sensor and a grain impurity rate sensor to an on-line control system driving a centrifugal blower and an adjustable louver sieve. It blocks designs that use that specific combination of loss and impurity sensing feeding automated blower and sieve-opening adjustment as one integrated closed-loop system. Designs that sense loss or impurity but act on a different mechanism, or that use manual rather than automatic sieve adjustment, sit outside its literal claim scope, though a full freedom-to-operate check should confirm claim boundaries precisely.
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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.