Drill String & Tubulars Patents: Top Companies & Filing Trends 2026
- 38.7% of all 68,489 records sit with the five most active filers, so most of the core drill-string claim space is already staked out by a small group.
- Filings fell 39% from 2021 to 2024 (604 to 368), the last span the data treats as complete — publication lag means 2025-2026 will fill in further.
- E21B earth and rock drilling covers 26.6% of records while adjacent classes like F16L pipe fittings (0.3%) and G06N AI-based computing (0.3%) remain thinly claimed.
Filing growth compares 2021 (604 records) with 2024 (368) — 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 68,489 records in scope (CR5), not by the ranked leaders only.
What this landscape covers
This landscape maps 68,489 published records matching drill string and tubulars terminology combined with equipment integrity, leak detection, material degradation and drilling-operation language. The scope runs from 2015 through the 2026-08-31 data cut-off, capturing both the mechanical hardware of the string and the sensing and control systems built around it. Records are drawn from receiving offices spanning the United States, Canada, WIPO, Europe, the United Kingdom and Australia, giving a cross-jurisdictional view of where protection is actually being sought.
The dataset spans two decades of a mature mechanical field now absorbing digital instrumentation, so the same search string surfaces both century-old check-valve mechanics and newer downhole sensor and AI-assisted control claims. Reading the two together is the point: legacy claim density in core drilling hardware sits next to still-open ground in the data and control layers wrapped around it.
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Filing trends and technology composition
Two views of the same 68,489 records: how filing volume has moved year over year, and how those records distribute across IPC subclasses.
Filing trend, 2017-2026
Annual filings climbed from 728 in 2017 to a peak of 775 in 2020, then declined to 368 by 2024 — a 39% drop across 2021-2024. 2025 and 2026 figures are still incomplete because publication typically lags filing by around 18 months; treat the most recent two years as a floor, not a signal of a stalled field.
Technology composition by IPC subclass
E21B (earth and rock drilling for wells) dominates at 26.6% of the 68,489 records in scope, consistent with a field still centred on physical drilling hardware. G01V geophysics and gravity surveying follows at 3.4%, with materials, control systems, data processing and AI-based computing subclasses each under 1.1% — records can carry multiple IPC codes, so these shares do not sum to 100%.
Shares are the percentage of the 68,489 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
Go deeper on Drill String & Tubulars Patent Landscape with Eureka
This page is one run against one query. Ask Eureka your own question about drill string & tubulars patent landscape and every answer comes back with the patent numbers behind it.
Try EurekaThe most-cited prior art in this space
US5141051A — Electrical wet connect and check valve for a drill string
A connectable and releasable wet connect for transmitting electrical signals in a well drill string includes retrievable coacting telescoping male and female electrical connectors. A check valve allows downward passage of fluid through the drill string but prevents upward flow, using a valve seat surrounding the male member with shoulders for holding the seat in the drill string and a valve element slidably and sealingly engaging the male member.Filed by Baker Hughes Incorporated, granted 1992-08-25 — illustrative of how early electrical-signal and check-valve integration claims were staked out well before downhole digital sensing became common.
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | US6176323B1 | Drilling systems with sensors for determining properties of drilling fluid downhole | 861 |
| 2 | US6092610A | Actively controlled rotary steerable system and method for drilling wells | 738 |
| 3 | US6206108B1 | Drilling system with integrated bottom hole assembly | 555 |
| 4 | US6670880B1 | Downhole data transmission system | 550 |
| 5 | US6021377A | Drilling system utilizing downhole dysfunctions for determining corrective actions and simulating drilling co… | 540 |
| 6 | US5842149A | Closed loop drilling system | 506 |
| 7 | US5553678A | Modulated bias units for steerable rotary drilling systems | 506 |
| 8 | US5589775A | Rotating magnet for distance and direction measurements from a first borehole to a second borehole | 503 |
| 9 | US5812068A | Drilling system with downhole apparatus for determining parameters of interest and for adjusting drilling dir… | 450 |
| 10 | US4813495A | Method and apparatus for deepwater drilling | 447 |
Citation counts favour older filings that have had more time to accumulate references — read them as a signal of influence on subsequent filings, not of present-day importance.
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Browse MCP servers →What the numbers mean for filing strategy
Three patterns stand out once concentration, technology composition and momentum are read together.
The core is already claimed by a small group
The five most active assignees together hold 38.7% of all 68,489 records in scope, and the top ten push that to 51.3%. New entrants filing squarely in core mechanical drill-string claims are filing into dense prior art held by a handful of incumbents.
Hardware still dominates the IPC mix
E21B earth and rock drilling for wells covers 26.6% of records, dwarfing every adjacent class. G01V geophysics sits a distant second at 3.4%, and digital-layer classes such as G06F, G05B, G01N, F16L and G06N each sit at or below 1.1% — the physical string is heavily claimed, the software and sensing wrapper around it far less so.
Filing volume has cooled from its 2020 peak
Annual filings peaked at 775 in 2020 and fell 39% from 604 in 2021 to 368 in 2024, the last year the data treats as complete. Recent-year momentum among the largest assignees is negative across the board, though 2025-2026 counts are still filling in under normal publication lag.
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to drill string & tubulars patent landscape, with the prior art for and against each one.
Who is active and where the gaps sit
Filing activity concentrates around a small set of oilfield service majors, with a long tail of single-digit filers behind them.
One filer sits well ahead of the field
The top-ranked assignee holds 13,119 records, more than six times the fifth-place total of 2,108 — a gap wide enough that competitive filing strategy in core claims has to assume this incumbent's prior art is already in place.
A steep drop-off after the top ten
Tenth place holds 1,402 records against the leader's 13,119, and the top ten combined account for 51.3% of all 68,489 records. Below that tier, filing activity thins quickly across the remaining ranked companies.
Even leaders are filing less in the latest year
The largest oilfield-services filers each show double-digit-percent year-on-year declines in the most recent year, from roughly -67% up to -90%. This tracks the broader 2021-2024 slowdown rather than signalling any single company pulling back specifically.
| Assignee | Recent year | YoY |
|---|---|---|
| Schlumberger Technology Corp | 7 | -79% |
| Halliburton Energy Services, Inc. | 3 | -86% |
| Schlumberger Ltd | 2 | -75% |
| Schlumberger Canada Ltd | 2 | -67% |
| Saudi Arabian Oil Co (Saudi Aramco) | 1 | -90% |
| Schlumberger Technology LLC | 1 | -86% |
| Baker Hughes Holdings LLC | 0 | — |
| Landmark Graphics Corporation | 0 | — |
Where to take this next
The landscape points to two follow-on questions worth running before committing filing budget.
Test a claim against the cited prior art
The most-cited records in this set, several tied to check-valve and downhole-sensing mechanics from the 1990s and early 2000s, still shape what counts as novel in core drill-string hardware claims today.
Explore prior art in EurekaModel the under-claimed branches
AI-based control, material-degradation analytics and pipe-fitting integrity sensing sit at well under 1% of records each — worth a deeper freedom-to-operate pass before assuming the space is open.
Run a white space analysis in EurekaCommon questions about this landscape
Filing activity in this landscape is concentrated among a small group of oilfield service majors, with the leading assignee alone holding 13,119 of the 68,489 records in scope. The top five combined account for 38.7% of all records, and the top ten reach 51.3%. Below the top ten, the remaining companies in the 100-company ranking each hold progressively smaller shares, down to single-digit filings for the long tail.
Annual filings peaked at 775 in 2020 and have since declined, falling 39% from 604 in 2021 to 368 in 2024, which is the most recent year the dataset treats as complete. Filing counts for 2025 and 2026 are still incomplete because patent publication typically lags filing by around 18 months, so those years understate real activity rather than showing a genuine drop-off. The honest read is a cooling trend through 2024, not a collapse.
E21B, the IPC subclass covering earth and rock drilling for wells, appears in 26.6% of the 68,489 records in scope, making it by far the largest single category. G01V geophysics and gravity surveying follows at 3.4%, with materials science, control systems, data processing, material testing, pipe fittings and AI-based computing subclasses all sitting at or below 1.1% each. Because a single record can carry multiple IPC codes, these percentages add up to more than 100%, and the low shares in the digital and materials classes point to comparatively thin claim density there relative to core drilling hardware.
The clearest under-claimed ground sits in the digital and materials layers wrapped around the physical drill string rather than in the string mechanics themselves: F16L pipe fittings and G06N AI-based computing each cover only 0.3% of records, and G01N material analysis sits at 0.5%. Given that core mechanical claims are already dense and held by a concentrated set of incumbents, a first claim built around real-time material-degradation sensing fused with control-loop automation, rather than another downhole mechanical variant, is more likely to find open space.
US5141051A, assigned to Baker Hughes Incorporated and granted in 1992, claims a wet connect for transmitting electrical signals through a drill string combined with a check valve that permits downward fluid flow while blocking upward flow. It matters because it sits at the intersection of two claim families still active in this landscape: downhole electrical signal transmission and fluid check-valve mechanics integrated directly into the string. Any later filing combining electrical connectivity with directional flow control in a drill string needs to be checked against this and the other highly-cited records in the same cluster.
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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.