Downhole Power & Telemetry Patents: Top Companies & Trends 2026
Downhole Power and Wireless Telemetry Patents: Who Leads and Where the Gaps Sit
83.2% of all 191 records sit with the top 5 assignees, with the leader alone holding 92 records — this field is filed by a small set of incumbents, not a broad crowd. Annual filings rose from 23 in 2017 to a peak of 31 in 2022. The tracked growth window shows filings up 50% from 2021 (4) to 2024 (6); 2025 and 2026 figures are still filling in due to publication lag and should not be read as a decline.
- 1HALLIBURTON ENERGY SERVICES INC92
- 2WELLTEC OILFIELD SOLUTIONS AG24
- 3ACOUSTIC DATA LTD16
- 4FASTCAP SYSTEMS CORP14
- 5WELLTEC MFG CENT COMPLETIONS APS13
See the full downhole power and wireless telemetry 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 about this patent set
Who holds the most patents in downhole power and wireless telemetry?
One assignee holds 92 of the 191 records in this dataset, close to half the entire field. The next four assignees combined bring the top 5’s share to 83.2% of all records, and by the tenth-ranked company the count has fallen to just 2. This is a concentrated field: a new entrant should expect to be positioned against one dominant incumbent and a small set of established followers, not a broad, fragmented set of competitors.
What technologies are covered by downhole power and telemetry patents?
The core approaches include thermoelectric generators, downhole battery packs, inductive couplers, electromagnetic telemetry systems, repeater nodes for signal relay, and energy-harvesting mechanisms, all applied to powering or communicating with tools inside a wellbore. Almost every record (90.1% of the 191 in scope) is classified under E21B, the earth and rock drilling class, even when the invention is fundamentally an electronics or communications system, because the application context is a well.
Is patent filing in this area growing or slowing down?
Filings grew from 4 in 2021 to 6 in 2024, a 50% increase over that tracked span, with the overall peak year being 2022 at 31 records. The apparent drop in 2025 and 2026 is an artefact of publication lag — patents typically publish around 18 months after filing — so those recent years should be read as incomplete rather than as evidence of slowing activity.
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 Downhole Power and Wireless Telemetry 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.