Gear Hobbing Patents: Who Leads, Where the Gaps Are 2026
Gear Hobbing Process and Tooling Patents: Leaders, Filing Trends and Open Claim Space
35.5% concentration at the top. The five leading assignees hold 88 of the 248 records in scope, with one leader alone at 37 — a single-firm lead well ahead of the field. The peak year so far is 2020 at 8 records. The most recent complete comparison — 2021 at 4 rising to 2024 at 5 — is a +25% gain over that three-year span. Years after 2024 will fill in further as publication catches up with filing, typically by around 18 months, so the apparent drop into 2025-2026 should not be read as declining interest.
- 1THE GLEASON WORKS37
- 2MITSUBISHI HEAVY IND LTD17
- 3OERLIKON SURFACE SOLUTIONS AG PFAFFIKON16
- 4MITSUBISHI ELECTRIC CORP10
- 5SANDVIK INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY AB8
See the full gear hobbing process and tooling 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 gear hobbing patents
Who holds the most patents in gear hobbing tooling and process?
One assignee leads the 248-record dataset with 37 filings, well ahead of the fifth-place company at 8. That gap indicates a company treating hobbing tooling and process control as core, defended IP rather than a side interest. The next tier, from roughly fifth to tenth place, files at a much closer, more even pace, suggesting a competitive but smaller second tier rather than a clear number-two challenger.
Is gear hobbing patent activity growing or slowing down?
Filing rose to a peak of 8 records in 2020 and, over the most recent three-year span that can be treated as complete, grew from 4 records in 2021 to 5 in 2024 — a 25% increase. Records published in 2025 and 2026 will look lower simply because publication typically lags actual filing by around 18 months, so those years are still filling in rather than showing a real decline. Read the trend as still climbing, not plateauing.
What is dry hobbing and why does it show up so often in these patents?
Dry hobbing removes cutting fluid from the hobbing process, which cuts cost and environmental burden but raises the thermal and chip-clearing demands on the tool and machine. It shows up frequently in this dataset alongside coating claims (C23C, 11.3% of records) and lubricant chemistry claims (C10M, 6.5%), because eliminating fluid pushes more of the wear-management burden onto tool coatings and machine cooling design. The representative filing in this dataset, EP2886234A1, is itself built around an automatic dry hobbing machine with integrated fume control and air cooling.
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 Gear Hobbing Process and Tooling 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.