Docking and Capture Mechanisms Patents: Who Leads, Gaps 2026
Docking and Capture Mechanisms Patents: Leaders, Filing Trends and Open Claim Space
One legacy filer dominates. the leading assignee accounts for 29 of the records in the ranked set, against a second-place count of 2 or fewer for the rest of the field. Filings ran at 7 in 2017 and rose to a peak of 11 in 2020, the busiest year in the set so far. The count trails to 0 in 2026, but that year is still open for publication and should not be read as a stop in activity.
- 1麦克唐纳德特威勒联合公司29
- 2上海宇航系统工程研究所7
- 3波音公司2
- 4MORALES RAY H2
- 5LEWIS JAMES L2
See the full docking and capture mechanisms 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
Common questions on docking and capture mechanism patents
Who holds the most patents on spacecraft docking and capture mechanisms?
One assignee leads the ranked set with 29 of the records tracked in this dataset, far ahead of the next entities, which sit at 2 or fewer each. That leader’s lineage also holds the most-cited record in the field, US6354540B1, an androgynous electromagnetic capture-ring docking system originally filed by NASA. Anyone entering this space should treat that filer’s claim family as the first thing to check for overlap.
What is an androgynous docking interface, and why does it matter for patents?
An androgynous interface means both docking halves are identical, so either spacecraft can act as the active or passive side rather than needing a fixed male/female pairing. It matters here because the foundational patent in this dataset, US6354540B1, is built around exactly this feature combined with load-sensing electromagnetic capture, and it carries 156 citations, the highest in the set. New designs that claim androgynous capability need to map their claims against that patent’s scope specifically.
Is patent filing in this field growing or slowing down?
Filing rose from 7 records in 2017 to a peak of 11 in 2020, then appears to decline toward 2026. That apparent decline is not fully real: publication typically lags filing by about 18 months, so the last one to two years in any patent trend are understated. A meaningful growth rate cannot be calculated from this dataset because too few complete years remain after accounting for that lag.
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 Docking and Capture Mechanisms 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.