Fastest
Eureka on the web
When you want the answer in the next five minutes.
The agent works the prompt against patents and technical literature, citing every source.
Run your analysis now →https://www.patsnap.com/resources/blog/rd-blog/geotechnical-engineering-patent-landscape-patent-landscape/ · Patsnap · data cut-off 2026-08-31 · downloaded from the live page
Patent Landscape · Geotechnical EngineeringGeotechnical engineering patents: who leads foundation, ground support and site investigation filings
- Foundations dominate the claim space. E02D alone covers 55.1% of the 468 records in scope, far ahead of any other IPC subclass tracked here.
- The leader board thins out fast. The single largest assignee holds 33 records while the top 5 combined account for just 17.5% of all 468 records — a long tail follows.
- Filing has plateaued, not collapsed. Activity ran from 40 records at its 2021 peak to 37 in 2024, an 8% pullback that still leaves the field well above its 2017 level.
468
Published Records
18%
Top-5 Share of All Records
-8%
Filing Growth 2021→2024
CN
Leading Jurisdiction
Filing growth compares 2021 (40 records) with 2024 (37) — 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 468 records in scope (CR5), not by the ranked leaders only.
Published byPatsnap Research··7 min readSourced from Patsnap Eureka
Field Overview
What this landscape covers
This landscape tracks 468 published records at the intersection of soil mechanics, ground engineering and the design, deformation and durability concerns that follow from building on or into the ground. The search string pairs core geotechnical terminology with the practical questions engineers file patents to answer: how a structure carries design load, how ground deforms under it, and how ground support and construction process claims hold up over time. Filing runs from 2015 through the 2026-08-31 cut-off, with the most recent years still under-counted because publication typically lags filing by roughly 18 months.
Records here span foundation and earth-drilling equipment, tunnel and mine support, hydraulic and waterway works, bridge substructures, geophysical surveying and the digital and material-testing tools that increasingly sit alongside physical ground-engineering claims. China and the United States account for the bulk of receiving-office activity, with PCT, India, Canada and EPO filings forming a smaller but active secondary tier.
Filing activity by year, 2017–2026
Source: Patsnap Eureka. Assignee ranking and totals. Derived from a Patsnap search on Geotechnical Engineering Patent Landscape covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-08-31. Counts reflect published records only and shift as new filings publish.Run this in Eureka MCP
Let an AI agent run this analysis on your own technology
Pick a task. Every answer cites the patents behind it.
10,000 free credits to start
The Numbers
Filing trends and technology composition
Two views matter here: how filing volume has moved year over year, and how that volume splits across the IPC subclasses that make up ground-engineering practice.
From a slow start to a 2021 peak
Filings rose from 4 records in 2017 to a peak of 40 in 2021, then eased to 37 by 2024 — an 8% pullback over that three-year span rather than a reversal. 2025 and 2026 figures will keep rising in the dataset as later publications catch up, so treat the tail end of the chart as a floor, not a ceiling.
Foundations carry the field
E02D (foundations and earth drilling) appears in 55.1% of all 468 records, more than five times the share of any single runner-up class. Earth and rock drilling for wells (E21B, 9.0%), material analysis and testing (G01N, 8.8%) and digital data processing (G06F, 9.6%) form a secondary cluster, with tunnel support, hydraulic works, bridges and geophysical survey each sitting in the mid-single digits. Because a record can carry several classes, these shares add up past 100% and should be read as overlap, not a partition of the field.
Shares are the percentage of the 468 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
Source: Patsnap Eureka. Filing trend and technology composition. Derived from a Patsnap search on Geotechnical Engineering Patent Landscape covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-08-31. Counts reflect published records only and shift as new filings publish.
Go deeper on Geotechnical Engineering Patent Landscape with Eureka
This page is one run against one query. Ask Eureka your own question about geotechnical engineering patent landscape and every answer comes back with the patent numbers behind it.
Try EurekaKey Patents
Representative filing and most-cited prior art
Representative Record
Subsurface exploration using load tests on short model piles for determining load-settlement relationship and engineering properties of soils
GUPTA, RAMESH CHANDRA
The filing addresses a known weakness of standard in-situ tests (SPT, CPT, CPTu, DMT, PMT): they can produce engineering-property estimates that vary by 50% or more depending on which empirical correlation is used, and for soft soils the SPT provides little more than qualitative WOR/WOH data. The proposed method instead runs load tests on short model piles, with or without instrumentation, at multiple depths within a soil deposit to derive load-settlement relationships and geomaterial properties directly from measured pile response rather than from correlation tables.Filed by Gupta, Ramesh Chandra; published 2020-11-03 as US10823880B1.
Most-cited records in this landscape
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | US20140368373A1 | Scanners, targets, and methods for surveying | 168 |
| 2 | US20140368378A1 | Systems, apparatus, and methods for data acquisition and imaging | 160 |
| 3 | US6813949B2 | Pipeline inspection system | 81 |
| 4 | US20150025788A1 | Systems, apparatus, and methods for acquisition and use of image data | 80 |
| 5 | US20040031337A1 | Pipeline inspection system | 80 |
| 6 | US10823880B1 | Subsurface exploration using load tests on short model piles at various depths of a soil deposit for determin… | 77 |
| 7 | US4650367A | Internally reinforced extruded plastic pipe | 61 |
| 8 | US20080282623A1 | Method and apparatus for precast wall and floor block system | 56 |
| 9 | US20190108603A1 | Property enhancement services | 55 |
| 10 | US5800090A | Apparatus and method for liquefaction remediation of liquefiable soils | 47 |
Citation counts favour older filings simply by virtue of time in the corpus — read them as a signal of influence within this dataset, not as a ranking of current technical importance.
Each row carries its publication number; clicking a row searches Eureka by that number.
Source: Patsnap Eureka. Citation counts and representative records. Derived from a Patsnap search on Geotechnical Engineering Patent Landscape covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-08-31. Counts reflect published records only and shift as new filings publish.Run this in Eureka MCP
Run it yourself
Put your own technology through the same analysis
Where to run it
For builders
MCP server & REST API
When it has to run inside your own pipeline.
Patent search, landscape analysis and assignee resolution as MCP tools. Drop them into any agent framework, or call REST directly.
Browse MCP servers →Insights
What the data means for filing strategy
The composition and concentration figures point to a field where physical foundation claims are dense but the surrounding digital and analytical layers still have room to move.
Concentration
17.5%
of 468 records held by the top 5 assignees
No single player controls the field
The leading assignee holds 33 records out of 468, and the top 5 combined reach only 17.5% of all records in scope. That is a fragmented field by patent-landscape standards — useful for a new entrant, since no single portfolio blocks the whole space, but it also means freedom-to-operate work has to check a long tail rather than a short list.
Top 10 combined reach 24.8% of all 468 records.
Technology mix
55.1%
of records carry an E02D foundations classification
Foundations claims dominate, adjacent classes are thinner
E02D's 55.1% share dwarfs every other subclass tracked, including G06F digital processing (9.6%) and G01N material testing (8.8%). That imbalance suggests the physical foundation and earth-drilling claim space is comparatively occupied, while the digital-analysis and testing layers sit on lighter prior art relative to their practical importance.
E02D 258 records vs. next-largest E21B at 42.
Momentum
-8%
change in filings, 2021 peak to 2024
A plateau, not a decline
Filings peaked at 40 records in 2021 and settled at 37 by 2024 — a modest 8% pullback rather than a falling trend. Because publication lags filing by around 18 months, the apparent drop-off in 2025-2026 in raw counts is an artefact of the data cut-off, not evidence the field is cooling.
2017 baseline was just 4 records.
Eureka AI Agent
Looking for what nobody has claimed yet?
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to geotechnical engineering patent landscape, with the prior art for and against each one.
Co-filing is rare but tight where it exists
| Assignee | Co-assignee | Shared families |
|---|---|---|
| CREAMER PHILIP A | CARFAGNO MICHAEL G | 9 |
| CREAMER PHILIP A | ASTON SCOTT D | 9 |
| CARFAGNO MICHAEL G | ASTON SCOTT D | 9 |
| NIROUMAND HAMED | BALACHOWSKI LECH | 8 |
| Contech Engineered Solutions LLC | CREAMER PHILIP A | 3 |
| Contech Engineered Solutions LLC | CARFAGNO MICHAEL G | 3 |
| Contech Engineered Solutions LLC | ASTON SCOTT D | 3 |
| KVAERNER CEMENTATION FOUND LTD | ENGLAND MELVIN GERRARD | 1 |
Only 8 co-assignee pairs appear in this dataset, and the strongest three each link the same trio of individual inventors at a strength of 9 co-filings — a sign that most activity here is filed by single organisations rather than joint ventures.
Source: Patsnap Eureka. Co-assignee relationships and derived observations. Derived from a Patsnap search on Geotechnical Engineering Patent Landscape covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-08-31. Counts reflect published records only and shift as new filings publish.Run this in Eureka MCP
Who's Filing
The assignee landscape
The ranking covers 100 companies and individuals counted by record, from a leader at 33 records down through a long tail of single- and few-filing entrants. It is the full ranked list the dataset returns, not a curated top-50 or top-100.
Leader
33
records
One name well ahead of the pack
The top-ranked assignee holds 33 records, roughly four times the fifth-place count of 8 — a clear lead, but not a dominant share of the 468-record field overall.
Fifth place sits at 8 records, tenth at 6.
Long tail
100
ranked assignees
Fragmentation past the top ten
Counts fall off quickly after the top ten: by the tenth position, filing volume is down to 6 records, and the ranking runs on to 100 entities in total, many with just one or two filings.
Top 10 combined: 116 records, 24.8% of all 468.
Momentum check
0
latest-year filings for several top names
Several established filers show no recent activity
A number of assignees that built meaningful portfolios earlier in the window, including individual inventors and specialist foundation firms, show zero filings in the latest tracked year — worth checking before assuming a portfolio is still actively growing.
Recent-year momentum data flags this per assignee.
Filing momentum by assignee
| Assignee | Recent year | YoY |
|---|---|---|
| Contech Engineered Solutions LLC | 0 | — |
| SADAR 3D | 0 | — |
| KVAERNER CEMENTATION FOUND LTD | 0 | — |
| BEBO ARCH INT | 0 | — |
| CREAMER PHILIP A | 0 | — |
| CARFAGNO MICHAEL G | 0 | — |
| ASTON SCOTT D | 0 | — |
| TENSAR INTERNATIONAL CORP | 0 | — |
Source: Patsnap Eureka. Assignee-level momentum. Derived from a Patsnap search on Geotechnical Engineering Patent Landscape covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-08-31. Counts reflect published records only and shift as new filings publish.Run this in Eureka MCP
What's Next
Where to take this next
The dataset points to specific next steps depending on whether the goal is freedom-to-operate, portfolio strategy or identifying open claim space.
Run a freedom-to-operate check against the long tail
With the top 5 assignees holding only 17.5% of records, clearance work needs to cover the ranked list broadly rather than a handful of large portfolios.
Explore the assignee rankingTest claim language in the under-claimed sub-areas
Digital monitoring, durability assessment and data-fusion claims sit on thinner prior art than core E02D foundation claims, based on the IPC composition here.
Draft and stress-test claims in EurekaTrack recency, not just volume, per assignee
Several high-count assignees show zero filings in the latest year; pairing volume with recent-year momentum gives a truer picture of who is still active.
Check assignee momentum in EurekaSource: Patsnap Eureka. Forward-looking reading of the same dataset. Derived from a Patsnap search on Geotechnical Engineering Patent Landscape covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-08-31. Counts reflect published records only and shift as new filings publish.Run this in Eureka MCP
FAQ
Common questions about geotechnical engineering patents
In this dataset of 468 records, one assignee leads with 33 records, well ahead of the fifth-ranked filer at 8. However, the top 5 assignees combined account for only 17.5% of all records in scope, so leadership at the top does not translate into control of the field. Beyond the top ten, the ranking runs to 100 entities, many holding just one or two filings, which means competitive intelligence work needs to look well past the leaders to get a full picture.
Foundations and earth drilling, classified under IPC subclass E02D, appear in 55.1% of the 468 records tracked here, making it by far the densest claim space. Digital data processing (G06F, 9.6%), earth and rock drilling for wells (E21B, 9.0%) and material analysis and testing (G01N, 8.8%) form a secondary tier. Tunnel support, hydraulic engineering, bridges and geophysical surveying each sit in the mid-single-digit range, suggesting these are comparatively lighter-filed relative to their role in practice.
Filings grew steadily from 4 records in 2017 to a peak of 40 in 2021, then eased slightly to 37 by 2024, an 8% decline over that span rather than a collapse. Figures for 2025 and 2026 will continue rising as more publications are indexed, because publication typically lags the actual filing date by around 18 months. On the evidence available through the last complete year, the field looks like a plateau after strong growth, not a field in retreat.
The IPC composition shows a strong skew toward physical foundation and drilling claims under E02D, while classes tied to digital monitoring, material testing and cross-domain data fusion carry noticeably lower filing density. Sub-areas such as real-time load-settlement instrumentation, digital ground-deformation analytics, and durability assessment for tunnel and mine ground support show comparatively thin coverage relative to their practical importance. These are reasonable starting points for a novelty search before drafting new claims.
US10823880B1, filed by Gupta, Ramesh Chandra and published 2020-11-03, covers a method of subsurface exploration using load tests on short model piles at multiple depths to determine load-settlement relationships and geomaterial engineering properties. It targets a specific weakness of standard in-situ tests, which can disagree by 50% or more depending on the empirical correlation applied, particularly for soft soils where SPT data is limited. Anyone working on pile-testing methodology or soil-property estimation from load data should review its claims directly before designing a similar test protocol.
Answers are grounded in the same dataset. Derived from a Patsnap search on Geotechnical Engineering Patent Landscape covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-08-31. Counts reflect published records only and shift as new filings publish.Run this in Eureka MCP
Research Geotechnical Engineering Patent Landscape in depth with Eureka
Go past this page: query the whole geotechnical engineering patent landscape corpus yourself, in your own scope.
Every answer comes back with patent numbers you can open.
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.