Landing Gear Shock Absorber Patents: Who Leads, Trends 2026
- Concentrated at the top. The leading assignee alone accounts for 414 of 812 records, and the top 5 combined hold 73.4% of the field.
- Filing has cooled from its 2018 peak. Annual filings ran from 97 at the 2018 peak down to 39 in 2021 and 19 in 2024, a -51% move over that span.
- Damping and structural claims dominate. F16F spring/damper classifications sit on 39.3% of records, well behind the 73.5% carried by aeroplane and helicopter classification B64C.
Filing growth compares 2021 (39 records) with 2024 (19) — 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 812 records in scope (CR5), not by the ranked leaders only.
What the landing gear shock absorber patent data covers
This landscape draws on 812 published records filed or published between 2015 and mid-2026, indexed against oleo-pneumatic strut, shock strut and landing gear strut terminology combined with damping-specific language: metering pin, orifice damping, gas spring rate, sink rate, seal friction and strut stroke. The search string is deliberately narrow to the damping mechanism itself rather than landing gear broadly, so the set captures the engineering core of shock absorber design rather than the wider undercarriage.
Records here span original equipment manufacturers, tier-one landing gear system suppliers and individual inventors, filed across multiple receiving offices including the United States, the EPO, Canada and Germany. Because publication lags filing by roughly eighteen months, the most recent one to two years in any trend line will always understate real filing activity.
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Filing trend and technology composition
Two views of the same 812-record set: how filing activity has moved year over year, and how records distribute across IPC subclasses covering aircraft structure, damping hardware and ground testing.
Filing trend: a 2018 peak followed by a multi-year pullback
Annual filings rose to a peak of 97 in 2018, then eased through the following years; by 2021 the figure was 39 and by 2024 -51% – now 19. 2025 and 2026 figures are still filling in given publication lag, so the recent apparent drop to figures near zero should not be read as the field's current state.
IPC composition: aircraft structure classes dominate, damping is the largest sub-theme
B64C (aeroplanes and helicopters) appears on 73.5% of the 812 records, reflecting that shock strut design is filed as aircraft structure. F16F (springs and vibration dampers) at 39.3% is the clearest mechanical-damping signal, while B64F and G01M each sit at 16.0%, pointing to meaningful filing around ground installations and test/measurement methods rather than the strut mechanism alone.
Shares are the percentage of the 812 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
Go deeper on Landing Gear Shock Absorber Design with Eureka
This page is one run against one query. Ask Eureka your own question about landing gear shock absorber design and every answer comes back with the patent numbers behind it.
Try EurekaRepresentative and most-cited records
Dual-stage, stroke-activated, mixed fluid gas shock strut servicing monitoring system (US11364997B2, Goodrich Corporation, 2022-06-21)
A method for monitoring a dual-stage, stroke-activated, mixed fluid gas shock strut includes receiving, by a controller, primary chamber temperature and pressure sensor readings, secondary chamber pressure and temperature sensor readings, and a shock strut stroke sensor reading; calculating a compression factor; determining compression factors for known oil volumes based on temperature and/or stroke readings; and calculating oil volume, moles of gas and gas volume in the primary chamber.Abstract text is taken directly from the published filing.
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | US6382556B1 | VTOL airplane with only one tiltable prop-rotor | 157 |
| 2 | US4291850A | Contractable shock absorber strut | 120 |
| 3 | US5548517A | Aircraft weight and center of gravity indicator | 108 |
| 4 | US8042765B1 | Aircraft landing gear compression rate monitor | 105 |
| 5 | US6293141B1 | Method of determining status of aircraft landing gear | 104 |
| 6 | US6032090A | System and method for on-board determination of aircraft weight and load-related characteristics | 85 |
| 7 | US5214586A | Aircraft weight and center of gravity indicator | 84 |
| 8 | US3073586A | Aircraft landing gear | 83 |
| 9 | US6128951A | Aircraft weight and center of gravity indicator | 78 |
| 10 | US5521827A | On-board aircraft weighting and center of gravity determing apparatus and method | 77 |
Citation counts favour older records simply because they have had longer to accumulate citations inside this corpus; treat them as a signal of influence on later filings, not of current commercial importance.
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
Reading the concentration, trend and classification figures together points to where claim space is occupied and where filing has genuinely slowed rather than merely lagged in publication.
The field is not fragmented
Five assignees hold 596 of the 812 records in scope, with the leader alone responsible for 414. A new entrant is filing into a space where the core claim territory around strut structure and damping control has already been staked out repeatedly by a small group.
Filing volume has genuinely pulled back
Annual filings fell from 39 in 2021 to 19 in 2024, a decline that holds even after allowing for publication lag on the trailing years. This follows a 2018 peak of 97 filings a year, suggesting the core mechanical strut design space has matured past its most active filing period.
Damping hardware is a minority of the aircraft-structure filing
B64C aircraft-structure classification touches 73.5% of records, while F16F springs-and-dampers classification, the more mechanism-specific class, covers 39.3%. Testing and measurement classes G01M and B64F each sit at 16.0%, indicating a meaningful secondary filing theme around ground test rigs and ground installations rather than the strut itself.
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to landing gear shock absorber design, with the prior art for and against each one.
Who holds the claim space, and where momentum has stalled
The ranked assignee list covers 79 companies counted by patent family record. Recent-year momentum figures show the leading historical filers with little or no activity in the latest tracked year, consistent with the broader 2021-2024 pullback rather than a shift to a new leader.
One assignee holds roughly half the field
The leading assignee's 414 records represent more than half of all 812 records in scope, spanning strut structure, servicing monitoring and metering hardware claims built up over successive filing generations.
A steep drop after the leading group
Filing volume falls sharply outside the top ranks: fifth place holds 33 records and tenth place holds 10, meaning the long tail of the 79 ranked assignees is thin, single-digit or low-double-digit filers rather than a broad competitive middle.
Even top-ranked filers show no recent activity recorded
Several of the highest-volume historical assignees show zero filings in the latest tracked year. Given the roughly eighteen-month publication lag, this understates true recent activity, but it is consistent with the broader slowdown already visible in the 2021-2024 trend.
| Assignee | Recent year | YoY |
|---|---|---|
| Goodrich Corporation | 0 | -100% |
| NANCE C KIRK | 0 | -100% |
| The Boeing Company | 0 | — |
| BENDIX AVIATION CORP | 0 | — |
| Messier-Dowty Limited | 0 | — |
| Safran Landing Systems Canada Inc. | 0 | — |
| PNEUMO ABEX CORP | 0 | — |
| Grumman Aerospace Corporation | 0 | — |
Where to take this analysis
The dataset points to where claim density is highest and where it thins out. Turning that into a filing or freedom-to-operate position means going record by record on the branches that matter to a specific design.
Check freedom-to-operate on strut structure claims
With 73.4% of records held by five assignees, any new strut structure filing should be checked against their specific claim scope before drafting, not just against the field average.
Explore the assignee ranking in EurekaTrack the metering pin and orifice damping sub-claims
Damping-specific classification F16F covers only 39.3% of records against a 73.5% aircraft-structure baseline, suggesting mechanism-level claims are less crowded than structural ones.
Run a sub-claim search in EurekaWatch for renewed filing once 2025-2026 data settles
The apparent drop toward zero in the most recent years reflects publication lag, not necessarily reduced R&D activity; revisit the trend once those years are more complete.
Set a monitoring alert in EurekaLanding gear shock absorber patents: frequently asked questions
This landscape identifies 812 published records filed or published between 2015 and mid-2026, using a search string built around oleo-pneumatic strut and shock strut terminology combined with damping-specific terms such as metering pin, orifice damping, gas spring rate and sink rate. This is a scoped search rather than an exhaustive count of every patent touching landing gear, so figures should be read as representative of the damping-mechanism core rather than a total for undercarriage patents broadly. The 812-record set is also the denominator used for every percentage figure in this landscape.
The assignee ranking covers 79 companies counted by record, with a single leading assignee holding 414 of the 812 records in scope, more than half the field on its own. The top 5 assignees combined account for 73.4% of all records, and the top 10 account for 83.3%, showing that filing activity is heavily concentrated rather than spread across a broad competitive set. Fifth place holds 33 records and tenth place holds 10, so the drop-off outside the leading group is steep.
Filing activity peaked at 97 records in 2018 and has since pulled back; the tracked figure moved from 39 filings in 2021 to 19 in 2024, a -51% change over that span. That decline is measured only through 2024, the most recent year treated as complete, because publication lags filing by roughly eighteen months and 2025-2026 figures are still filling in. It is fair to describe filing as having cooled from its 2018 peak, but it would be wrong to read the near-zero figures in the very latest years as evidence the field has stopped.
F16F, springs and vibration dampers, is the class most specific to the damping mechanism itself, covering 39.3% of the 812 records in scope. B64C, aeroplanes and helicopters, is far broader and appears on 73.5% of records because most filings are framed as aircraft structure. Secondary classes G01M (testing and structure balance) and B64F (ground installations) each cover 16.0% of records, pointing to a real filing theme around ground test methods and infrastructure alongside the strut hardware itself.
US11364997B2, assigned to Goodrich Corporation, covers a method for monitoring a dual-stage, stroke-activated, mixed fluid gas shock strut using controller-based readings of chamber temperature, pressure and stroke sensors to calculate oil volume and gas moles inside the strut. It is used here as the representative record for the landscape because it sits squarely in the metering-and-monitoring sub-theme that runs through the dataset. Anyone drafting claims around sensor-based strut servicing or compression-factor calculation should review its specific claim language before assuming that space is open.
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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.