EDM Drilling Patents: Who Leads, Where the Gaps Are 2026
EDM Drilling of Small Deep Holes: Patents, Leading Filers and Open Claim Space
Concentrated at the top. The top 5 assignees hold 63.4% of all 71 records in scope, and the top 10 hold 84.5% — a long tail of single or occasional filers fills the rest. Filings ran at 10 in 2017, the peak year for the dataset, and have not returned to that level since. Because publication typically lags filing by around 18 months, the most recent years in this trend are understated and should not be read as a real drop-off yet.
- 1TAI I ELECTRON MACHINING13
- 2AGIE CHARMILLES SA10
- 3ROLLS ROYCE PLC8
- 4SPARK TEC8
- 5RTX CORP6
See the full edm drilling of small deep holes 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 EDM small-hole drilling patents
Who are the leading patent holders in small-hole EDM drilling?
Patent filing in this field is concentrated: the leading assignee holds 13 of the 71 records in scope, and the top 5 assignees together hold 63.4% of all records. The ranked leaders include turbine OEMs and dedicated EDM equipment makers rather than a single dominant industry type. Beyond the top 10 filers, who together hold 84.5% of records, the remainder of the 23-company ranking consists of assignees with only a handful of filings each.
What is the most common patent classification for EDM drilling of small deep holes?
B23H, covering electro/chemical machining, appears in 91.5% of the 71 records in scope, making it by far the dominant classification. Secondary classes such as F01D and F02C mark applications in turbine blade and gas-turbine component cooling-hole drilling, while smaller classes like G01B and B23F reflect measurement and gear-hole use cases layered on top of the core EDM process claims.
Is patent filing activity in EDM small-hole drilling growing or slowing?
Filings peaked at 10 in 2017 and have not returned to that level in the years since. Because patent publication typically lags filing by around 18 months, the most recent years in the dataset understate real filing activity and should not yet be read as a decline. A reliable growth rate cannot be computed from this dataset because fewer than four complete years remain once that publication lag is accounted for.
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 EDM Drilling of Small Deep Holes 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.