Diamond Core Drilling Patents: Top Companies & Filing Trends 2026
Diamond Core Drilling Patents: Who Leads and Where the Filing Has Gone
Concentrated at the top. The top 5 assignees hold 460 of 960 records in scope (47.9%), and the top 10 hold 570 (59.4%) — a field where a handful of drilling-equipment specialists set the claim baseline. Filings ran from 59 in 2017 down to 7 in the most recent partial year. The most reliable read is 2021 to 2024, where filings dropped from 37 to 14, a -62% change — treat any year after 2024 as still filling in rather than as a confirmed decline.
- 1LONGYEAR TM INC136
- 2REFLEX INSTRUMENTS ASIA PACIFIC PTY LTD113
- 3GLOBALTECH CORP PTY LTD97
- 4BOART LONGYEAR MANUFACTURING & DISTRIBUTION INC80
- 5FLEXIDRILL34
See the full diamond core drilling analysis in Eureka
- The complete ranking, not just the top five
- Every IPC branch with its share of the corpus
- The most-cited records, and where claim space is still thin
Frequently asked questions
Who are the leading patent holders in diamond core drilling?
The field is concentrated: the top 5 assignees account for 460 of the 960 records in scope, or 47.9%, and the top 10 account for 570, or 59.4%. The leading assignee alone holds 136 records, more than double the count of the fifth-place holder at 34. This means a small group of drilling-equipment and mining-technology specialists set most of the prior art that a new filer has to clear.
Is patent filing in diamond core drilling growing or shrinking?
Filing peaked in 2017 at 59 records a year and has declined since. The clearest complete-year comparison is 2021 to 2024, where filings dropped from 37 to 14, a 62% decrease. Filings in 2025 and 2026 look lower still, but publication typically lags filing by around 18 months, so those most recent years are undercounted and should not yet be read as a continued freefall.
What technology areas within diamond core drilling get the most patent activity?
Almost all activity sits in IPC subclass E21B, earth and rock drilling, which covers 920 of 960 records, or 95.8%. Every other subclass in the dataset — geophysics and surveying, control systems, length measurement, valves, material testing, and navigation — sits at 3.2% of records or below. That gap means the physical drilling hardware is heavily claimed while the surrounding sensing and control layers are comparatively open.
Disclaimer. This analysis is based on Patsnap Eureka data drawn from a limited snapshot of global patent records and is provided for general information and reference only. Patent data carries inherent limitations — recent filings are under-counted because of publication lag, counts may be on a record or family basis, classification and applicant-name data may contain errors or duplicates, and the underlying search query defines the scope shown — so the analysis may be incomplete or inaccurate and may not reflect the full technology landscape.
Nothing here is an exhaustive prior-art, novelty, freedom-to-operate or validity search, nor does it constitute legal, financial or professional advice, and it should not be relied upon as such. Verify independently and review with qualified patent and legal professionals before acting on it.
Method: Filing trend and technology composition. Derived from a Patsnap search on Diamond Core Drilling covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-07-31. Counts reflect published records only and shift as new filings publish. Every share divides by all records in scope. Data: Patsnap Eureka. See the full landscape report.