Header and Crop Feeding Mechanism Patents: Leaders & Trends 2026
- Concentrated at the top. The five most active filers together hold 164 of 244 records in scope — 67.2% of the whole dataset — with a long tail of single- and double-filing entrants behind them.
- Filings cooled after a 2019 peak. Annual filings hit 43 in 2019, then fell from 17 in 2021 to 7 in 2024, a 59% drop over that three-year span — the clearest complete-year trend the data supports.
- Almost everything sits under one IPC class. A01D (harvesting and mowing) touches 88.5% of the 244 records; threshing (A01F) and soil-working (A01B) trail far behind, marking where claim density actually is and is not.
Filing growth compares 2021 (17 records) with 2024 (7) — 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 244 records in scope (CR5), not by the ranked leaders only.
What this landscape covers
Header and crop feeding mechanisms sit at the front of the harvester, where ground contour, crop density and forward speed all have to be reconciled in real time. The search covers 244 published records filed or published between 2015 and mid-2026, drawn from filings that combine harvester header hardware with control concepts such as header height control, ground following, lodged crop handling, feeding uniformity, header loss and capacity or width matching. Publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, so the most recent one to two years in any trend understate actual filing activity rather than reflect a real slowdown.
The scope spans both mechanical header architecture — cutterbars, reels, draper platforms, feed augers — and the control logic that adjusts them on the move, which is why the technology composition below shows a dominant harvesting class alongside smaller but persistent classes in conveying, switches and gearing.
Filing trends and technology composition
Two views of the same 244-record dataset: how filing volume has moved year over year, and how those records distribute across IPC subclasses.
A 2019 peak followed by a real decline through complete years
Filings rose to a peak of 43 in 2019, then fell across the last fully comparable window: 17 in 2021 down to 7 in 2024, a 59% decline. Years beyond 2024 are still filling in under the publication lag and should not be read as a continuation of the drop.
Harvesting and mowing dominates the claim space
A01D (harvesting and mowing) appears in 88.5% of the 244 records in scope, making it the default class for header hardware and control claims alike. A01F (threshing and crop processing) at 9.0% and A01B (soil working) at 4.9% are the next largest, with conveying, switches, load handling and gearing classes each under 3% — thin enough that a well-drafted claim there faces far less prior art density.
Shares are the percentage of the 244 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
Go deeper on Header and Crop Feeding Mechanisms with Eureka
This page is one run against one query. Ask Eureka your own question about header and crop feeding mechanisms and every answer comes back with the patent numbers behind it.
Try EurekaThe most-cited prior art in this field
US20180271016A1 — Harvester header control system, method and apparatus
The harvester header height control system allows automatic adjustment of the header height as the harvester moves across a field to optimize the harvest of the produce in the field. The header height control system adjusts for the topography of the field, the density and health of the plants in the field and the speed of the harvester.Filed by Milano Technical Group and published 2018-09-27, this record is representative of the control-logic layer that sits over mechanical header hardware in this dataset.
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | US4776153A | Automatic height control for a laterally pivoted harvester header | 164 |
| 2 | US6615570B2 | Header position control with forward contour prediction | 131 |
| 3 | US4124970A | Automatic reel height control for a harvester header having a flexible cutterbar | 91 |
| 4 | US4332126A | Automatic height control for a harvester header | 87 |
| 5 | US5768865A | Header equipped with rotary cutterbar and crop converging structure | 65 |
| 6 | US5799483A | Combine harvester header lateral levelling | 49 |
| 7 | US20180271016A1 | Harvester header control system, method and apparatus | 42 |
| 8 | US3982385A | Stalk rolls for corn harvesters | 41 |
| 9 | US20220232770A1 | Agricultural header control | 39 |
| 10 | US7658059B2 | Synchronous drive for split sickle bars on harvester header | 39 |
Citation counts reflect influence within the searched corpus and skew toward older filings — a highly cited 1980s patent is a signal of foundational status, not of present-day filing activity.
Each row carries its publication number; clicking a row searches Eureka by that number.
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Three read-throughs from the concentration, class and citation data above, aimed at where a new filing would land relative to existing claims.
The top of the field is settled, the rest is fragmented
Five assignees account for 164 of the 244 records in scope. Below that handful, filing counts drop quickly — tenth place holds only 4 records — meaning most participants in this space are single-country, single-family filers rather than repeat applicants.
One class carries almost the whole field
A01D absorbs the great majority of records, which means most incremental claims will be read against a dense harvesting-and-mowing prior art base. Classes like B65G (conveying) and F16H (gearing), each near 1-2%, carry far less claim density for anyone drafting around mechanical feed or drive components rather than the header itself.
A cooling trend, not a stalled one
The complete-year data shows a genuine drop from 17 filings in 2021 to 7 in 2024. Because publication lags filing by around 18 months, 2025 and 2026 figures are not yet reliable evidence of where the curve is actually heading next.
Height-control claims trace back decades
The most-cited record in this dataset, on automatic height control for a laterally pivoted header, has drawn 164 citations — evidence that foundational height-control mechanics are heavily referenced rather than open ground, even though the underlying patents are old.
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to header and crop feeding mechanisms, with the prior art for and against each one.
Who is filing, and where the gaps sit
The ranking covers 71 companies across all 244 records in scope — not a top-50 or top-100 cut, the full list the data returns. A small group of large equipment manufacturers accounts for most of the volume, with co-filing patterns between related corporate entities visible in the data.
One filer sets the pace by a wide margin
The leading assignee holds 51 records, more than five times the tenth-place count of 4. That gap suggests a deliberate, sustained filing program rather than opportunistic patenting.
Related entities file jointly across jurisdictions
The strongest co-assignee pair shares 7 records, and the next two strongest pairs share 6 each — a pattern consistent with one corporate group routing filings through separate regional or divisional entities rather than independent competitors converging on the same claims.
Most participants file once or twice, not repeatedly
Outside the ten most active assignees, filing counts drop to a handful of records or fewer per company. That long tail includes regional manufacturers and individual inventors, and it is where narrowly drafted claims are more likely to survive uncontested.
| Assignee | Recent year | YoY |
|---|---|---|
| Deere & Company | 0 | — |
| CNH Industrial America LLC | 0 | — |
| CNH Industrial Belgium NV | 0 | — |
| Kemper Machine Factory (Maschinenfabrik Kemper) | 0 | — |
| MAIZCO S A I Y C | 0 | — |
| CNH (CHINA) MANAGEMENT CO LTD | 0 | — |
| AGCO AS | 0 | — |
| CLAAS Selbstfahrende Erntemaschinen GmbH | 0 | — |
Taking this landscape further
The figures above describe where the field has been. Turning them into a filing or freedom-to-operate decision means going deeper into the individual claims and the assignees behind them.
Trace a specific claim boundary
Pull the independent claims of the most-cited height-control patents to see exactly what is protected versus what has since expired or narrowed.
Explore claims in EurekaWatch the top filers' recent activity
Recent-year momentum by assignee shows near-zero new filings from the historically dominant names — worth confirming whether that reflects a real pause or a publication-lag artifact.
Track assignee activity in EurekaMap the co-filing network
The corporate clustering among the top assignees suggests shared R&D pipelines; mapping it out clarifies who actually competes versus who files under related entities.
Map assignees in EurekaCommon questions on this landscape
The dataset's assignee ranking covers 71 companies across 244 records, and it is led by a single assignee holding 51 records, well ahead of the fifth-place holder at 10 and the tenth-place holder at 4. The top five combined account for 164 records, or 67.2% of the field, meaning a small group of established agricultural equipment manufacturers controls most of the filed claim space. Outside that group, filing activity drops quickly into a long tail of companies with only one or two records each, which is where new entrants are most likely to find open claim territory.
Filing activity peaked at 43 records in 2019 and has declined since across the years with complete data, falling from 17 in 2021 to 7 in 2024 — a 59% drop over that span. Because publication typically lags actual filing by around 18 months, the years right before the 2026 cut-off are undercounted and should not be read as confirming a continued decline. Anyone tracking this space should treat 2024 as the most recent reliable data point and revisit the 2025-2026 figures once they mature.
The large majority of records, 88.5% of the 244 in scope, sit in IPC class A01D, which covers harvesting and mowing machinery generally, including header structures and their control systems. Smaller shares fall in A01F (threshing and crop processing, 9.0%) and A01B (soil working, 4.9%), with control-adjacent classes like H01H (switches and relays) and F16H (gearing and transmissions) each appearing in only a few percent of records. A single record can carry more than one class, so these figures do not need to sum to 100%, and they show where claim density is concentrated versus where it is thin.
US20180271016A1, filed by Milano Technical Group and published in September 2018, describes a harvester header height control system that automatically adjusts header height in response to field topography, crop density and health, and harvester travel speed. It sits within a crowded area of prior art — the field's most-cited record, on automatic height control for a laterally pivoted header, has drawn 164 citations, indicating that automatic height-adjustment concepts generally are heavily referenced. Whether this specific filing blocks a new design depends on its granted claim scope, which should be checked directly rather than inferred from the abstract alone; the surrounding citation density is a strong signal that any height-control claim needs careful drafting to clear prior art.
The technology composition data points to several sub-areas outside the dominant A01D harvesting class that carry much lower filing density, including conveying and material handling (B65G, 2.5%), switches and relays (H01H, 2.0%), load handling (B60P, 1.2%) and gearing and transmissions (F16H, 1.2%). These lower-density classes correspond to functional areas like feed-auger torque sensing, draper belt tension control and multi-sensor ground-following fusion, where fewer records mean less prior art to design around. Combined with the long tail of single-filing assignees in the ranking, these sub-areas are the more realistic entry points for a new filer compared with the heavily cited height-control core.
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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.