Marine Drilling Riser Patents: Who Leads, Where the Gaps Are 2026
Marine Drilling Riser Patents: Filing Trends and the Assignees Holding the Claims
38.1% of all 2,265 records sit with the five leading assignees, so most white space lies outside that group rather than inside it. Filings ran from 79 in 2017 to a peak of 107 in 2020, then eased to 23 by 2024 — a 39% decline over the 2021-2024 span. 2025 and 2026 figures are still filling in given publication lag and should not be read as a continued fall.
- 1WEATHERFORD TECHNOLOGY HOLDINGS LLC480
- 2ITREC BV156
- 3FMC KONGSBERG SUBSEA AS102
- 4SHELL INTERNATIONALE RESEARCH MAATSCHAPPIJ BV69
- 5CAMERSON INT CORP56
See the full marine drilling risers 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 marine drilling riser patents
Who holds the most marine drilling riser patents?
The dataset’s leading assignee holds 480 of the 2,265 records in scope, well ahead of the fifth-place holder at 56. That single-assignee gap suggests one company has run a long, sustained filing program in this area rather than the field being split evenly among comparable competitors. The next several places are much closer together, with tenth place at 48 records, so the real competitive contest sits in that mid-field rather than at the very top.
Is marine drilling riser filing activity growing or slowing?
Filings peaked at 107 in 2020 and had fallen to 23 by 2024, a 39% decline from the 2021 figure of 38. That drop is measured only across years the data treats as complete; 2025 and 2026 filings are still being published, since publication typically lags actual filing by around eighteen months. Read the recent cooling as a real signal for 2021-2024, but don’t extend the conclusion to the very latest years without more data.
What technology areas dominate marine drilling riser patents?
E21B, the earth and rock drilling classification, appears in 88.7% of the 2,265 records in scope, making this overwhelmingly a wellbore-hardware field. B63B, covering ships and marine vessels, appears in only 12.3% of records, and smaller shares go to pipe fittings (F16L, 4.0%) and fluid flow control (F15D, 3.3%). Because a single record can carry multiple IPC codes, these percentages add up to more than 100%, and they should be read as overlapping coverage rather than a strict breakdown.
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 Marine Drilling Risers 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.