Drilling Vibration and Bit Dysfunction Patents: Who Leads and Where Filings Concentrate
61.4% sits with five companies. The top five assignees account for 1,185 of the 1,931 records in scope, with a long tail of single- and low-filing entrants behind them. Filings ran from 53 in 2017 to a peak of 93 in 2019, then eased to 45 by 2024 — a 17% decline over the 2021-2024 span. 2025 and 2026 figures are still filling in under normal publication lag and should not be read as a continued drop.
- 1BAKER HUGHES CO514
- 2HALLIBURTON ENERGY SERVICES INC381
- 3SCHLUMBERGER TECH CORP112
- 4CONOCOPHILLIPS CO104
- 5NAT OILWELL VARCO LP74
See the full drilling vibration and bit dysfunction 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 landscape
Who holds the most patents in drilling vibration and bit dysfunction?
One assignee leads the field with 514 of the 1,931 records in scope, well ahead of the fifth-ranked company at 74. The top five combined account for 61.4% of all records, so the field has a clear leader plus a long tail of smaller filers rather than a tightly bunched competitive set. This concentration matters for freedom-to-operate work: a new filing in core stick-slip or bit-whirl detection is most likely to run into that one company's prior art first.
Is patent filing in this space growing or shrinking?
Filings peaked at 93 in 2019 and eased to 45 by 2024, a 17% decline over the 2021-2024 span that can be treated as complete data. That is a real pullback from the peak, but 2024's level still sits above the 2017 starting point of 53. Figures for 2025 and 2026 are still filling in because publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, so it is too early to call this a continued downward trend.
What technology areas are most heavily patented within this field?
E21B, the earth-and-rock-drilling classification, appears on 89.7% of the 1,931 records in scope, making it by far the dominant category. G01V geophysics and G06F data processing follow at 9.4% and 6.7% respectively. Vibration-measurement-specific classes like G01H sit much lower at 2.2%, suggesting that sensing and measurement claims are less densely filed than the mechanical drilling claims around them.
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 Drilling Vibration and Bit Dysfunction 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.