Industrial Gearbox Patents: Who Leads, Where the Gaps Are 2026
- 70.1% in five hands. The top 5 assignees combined account for 61 of the 87 records in scope — a 70.1% share concentrated well before the ranking's tenth position.
- One leader files nearly a quarter of everything. The top-ranked assignee alone holds 22 records, more than double the fifth-place filer's count of 3.
- Gearing dominates, but adjacent classes are thin. F16H gearing and transmissions covers 72.4% of the 87 records, while control and data-processing classes barely register — a sign of where claim space is still open.
Top-5 share is the combined record count of the five largest assignees divided by all 87 records in scope (CR5), not by the ranked leaders only.
What this dataset covers
This landscape draws on 87 published records matched against terms describing industrial gearbox design: gear tooth contact, planetary gear stages, load sharing, misalignment sensitivity, tooth root stress, housing stiffness, tooth flank modification, and mesh power loss. The scope spans 2015 through mid-2026, with the most recent year understated because publication typically lags filing by roughly eighteen months.
The assignee ranking returned by the data endpoint covers 30 companies — the full ranking, not a top-50 or top-100 cut. Filing activity by receiving office spans the United States, Europe, WIPO's PCT route, Canada, Austria and Japan, indicating a field prosecuted across several major industrial markets rather than concentrated in one jurisdiction.
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Filing trend and technology composition
Two views of the same 87 records: how filings moved year over year, and which IPC subclasses the claims actually sit in.
Filing trend
Filings peaked in 2018 at 16 records. With fewer than four complete years available once publication lag is accounted for, no reliable growth rate can be stated for the recent period — treat the tail end of the trend as incomplete rather than declining.
Technology composition by IPC subclass
F16H (gearing & transmissions) covers 72.4% of the 87 records, with F16C (shafts, bearings & couplings) at 14.9% and F03D (wind motors) at 10.3% as the next-largest groups. Because a single record can carry several IPC classes, these shares sum to more than 100% — B23F, B60K, B64D, G05B and G06F each sit at 2.3%, marking the field's thin adjacent branches.
Shares are the percentage of the 87 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
Go deeper on Industrial Gearbox Design with Eureka
This page is one run against one query. Ask Eureka your own question about industrial gearbox design and every answer comes back with the patent numbers behind it.
Try EurekaMost-cited records and a representative early filing
US3545296A — Variable gear tooth contact arrangement
Filed by Dominion Engineering Works Ltd. and published 1970-12-08, this early record addresses variable gear tooth contact arrangement — a foundational concern that still underlies modern tooth flank modification and load-sharing claims.Its age places it outside most current freedom-to-operate concerns, but it establishes the technical baseline that later flank-modification claims had to design around.
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | US5679883A | Method and apparatus for comprehensive evaluation of tribological materials | 80 |
| 2 | US5178028A | Offset face gear transmission | 53 |
| 3 | US4682512A | Power train for heavy lift helicopters | 35 |
| 4 | US3721135A | Compound planetary gearing | 32 |
| 5 | US20090048051A1 | Bearing tooth gears for wind turbine applications | 27 |
| 6 | US20130042709A1 | Gear Change Transmission Having Axially Adjusting Countershafts | 22 |
| 7 | US20080124014A1 | Bearing Assembly For Supporting a Transmission Shaft In a Housing | 22 |
| 8 | US3545296A | Variable gear tooth contact arrangement | 20 |
| 9 | US20190085941A1 | Differential planetary gearbox | 16 |
| 10 | WO2006072151A1 | Bearing assembly for supporting a transmission shaft in a housing | 10 |
Citation counts inside a searched corpus favour older filings that have had more time to accumulate citations — read them as a signal of influence on the field, not of current commercial relevance.
Each row carries its publication number; clicking a row searches Eureka by that number.
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Browse MCP servers →What the numbers mean for a filing decision
Three read-outs from the concentration, composition and citation data — framed for where to file, and where not to.
Filing space is occupied at the top
With 61 of 87 records held by five assignees, new entrants filing squarely within core gear-tooth-contact and planetary-stage claims are filing into dense prior art. The leader's 22 records alone outpace the combined count of assignees ranked sixth through tenth.
Gearing claims crowd one subclass
F16H carries nearly three-quarters of all records, while F03D (wind motors) sits at 10.3% — evidence that wind-turbine gearbox applications are a meaningful but secondary claim surface rather than the field's centre of gravity.
The most-cited art predates current designs
The two most-cited records in this set, US5679883A and US5178028A, were published well before the current filing window opens. Their citation counts reflect decades of accumulation, not present-day relevance — useful as a baseline, not a target for freedom-to-operate analysis.
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to industrial gearbox design, with the prior art for and against each one.
Who is filing, and where the field is still open
The ranking covers 30 companies across the full 87-record set. Filing activity clusters early in the ranking, then thins into a long tail of single- and double-digit filers.
One assignee sets the pace
The top-ranked assignee holds 22 of the 87 records in scope, well ahead of the fifth-ranked filer's 3 records. That gap suggests one organisation has built a sustained filing programme around industrial gearbox design rather than a single product cycle.
The drop-off is steep past the leader
Filing counts fall quickly outside the top handful, down to 2 records at the tenth-ranked position. Most of the 30 ranked assignees sit at this level or below, indicating a field where a small group sets direction and the rest file opportunistically.
Co-filing is rare, not structural
Only three co-assignee pairs appear across the dataset, each linking a corporate assignee to a named inventor rather than to another company. This points to gearbox design patents being filed largely by single organisations, with limited cross-company joint development visible in the record.
| Assignee | Recent year | YoY |
|---|---|---|
| Genesis Advanced Technology Inc. | 0 | — |
| Smart Mfg Tech | 0 | — |
| Hansen Transmissions International NV | 0 | — |
| KOLEOGLOU ALEX | 0 | — |
| DOMINION ENGINEERING WORKS LTD | 0 | — |
| General Motors LLC | 0 | — |
| Romax Technology Limited | 0 | -100% |
| Sikorsky Aircraft Corporation | 0 | — |
Where to take this analysis
The composition and concentration data point to specific next steps depending on whether the goal is freedom-to-operate, white-space filing, or competitive tracking.
Run a freedom-to-operate check on core F16H claims
With 72.4% of records classed under F16H and a small group of assignees holding most of them, a targeted claim-chart review of the leader's portfolio is worth doing before filing into gear-tooth-contact or planetary-stage claims.
Explore F16H filings in EurekaScope a first filing in an under-claimed branch
Control-and-monitoring integration (G05B, G06F) and housing stiffness sit at 2.3% of records each — thin enough that a well-drafted first claim could stake out real space rather than compete with 70.1% concentration at the top.
Map white space in EurekaTrack the leader's recent filing behaviour
The leading assignee's 22-record lead is built on historical filings; checking whether that pace has continued into the most recent, still-incomplete years will show whether the concentration is deepening or levelling off.
Monitor assignee activity in EurekaCommon questions about industrial gearbox patents
One assignee leads the ranked field with 22 of the 87 records in scope, a count well ahead of the fifth-ranked filer's 3 records. The top 5 assignees combined hold 61 records, or 70.1% of all records in scope, showing the field is concentrated among a small group rather than spread evenly across the 30 ranked companies. Anyone assessing competitive risk should look closely at that leader's specific claim scope rather than treat the field as fragmented.
The large majority sit in IPC subclass F16H, gearing and transmissions, which covers 72.4% of the 87 records in scope. F16C, shafts bearings and couplings, follows at 14.9%, and F03D, wind motors, at 10.3%, showing wind-turbine gearboxes are a meaningful but secondary application. Smaller classes such as control systems and digital data processing sit at 2.3% each, marking areas with far less filing density.
The filing trend peaked in 2018 at 16 records, but fewer than four complete years remain once the roughly eighteen-month publication lag is accounted for, so no reliable growth rate can be stated for the most recent period. Treat the apparent drop in the last one to two years as incomplete data rather than a genuine decline. A meaningful growth assessment would need to wait for those years to finish publishing.
The IPC composition shows several branches with only 2.3% of the 87 records each, including control and regulating systems, digital data processing, vehicle propulsion integration, and aircraft equipment. These are areas adjacent to the dominant F16H gearing claims but not yet heavily claimed themselves. A first mover drafting around mesh power loss sensing, digital condition monitoring, or housing stiffness under dynamic load would be filing into comparatively open space.
US3545296A, filed by Dominion Engineering Works Ltd. and published in 1970, covers a variable gear tooth contact arrangement — an early foundational claim in the tooth-contact space. Given its age, it is very unlikely to still be in force and does not typically present a freedom-to-operate barrier today. Its main value now is as a technical baseline showing how long tooth-contact optimisation has been an active claim area, useful context when assessing novelty of newer flank-modification filings.
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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.