Marine Drilling Riser Patents: Who Leads, Where the Gaps Are 2026
- 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 fell 39% from 2021 to 2024 (38 to 23), the last span the data treats as complete once publication lag is accounted for.
- E21B carries 88.7% of records while B63B (marine vessels) sits at just 12.3% — vessel-integration claims are comparatively thin.
Filing growth compares 2021 (38 records) with 2024 (23) — 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 2,265 records in scope (CR5), not by the ranked leaders only.
What the marine drilling riser patent record shows
Marine drilling risers connect a floating or fixed drilling unit to the wellhead on the seabed, and the patent activity around them clusters tightly around mechanical integrity: riser joints, telescopic joints, tensioners and buoyancy modules dominate the claim language. The search scope covers 2,265 published records from 2015 through the 2026-07-31 cut-off, spanning riser hardware, vortex-induced-vibration mitigation and auxiliary-line routing. Most of the filing activity is mechanical and structural rather than software or sensing, which shows up clearly in the IPC composition below.
Because publication lags filing by roughly eighteen months, the last one or two years in any trend understate real activity — treat the most recent years as provisional rather than as evidence of a slowdown.
Filing trend and technology composition
Two views of the same 2,265-record dataset: filings by year, and the IPC subclasses those filings are drawn from.
Filing trend, 2017-2026
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.
IPC subclass composition
E21B (earth and rock drilling) touches 88.7% of the 2,265 records, confirming this is fundamentally a wellbore-hardware field. B63B (marine vessels, 12.3%), F16L (pipe fittings, 4.0%) and F15D (fluid flow control, 3.3%) are present but comparatively lightly claimed, and classes can overlap on a single record so shares sum past 100%.
Shares are the percentage of the 2,265 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
Go deeper on Marine Drilling Risers with Eureka
This page is one run against one query. Ask Eureka your own question about marine drilling risers and every answer comes back with the patent numbers behind it.
Try EurekaMost-cited records and a representative filing
US20170335634A1 — Marine drilling riser joint
Filed by ITREC B.V. and published 2017-11-23, this application claims a marine drilling riser joint built around umbilical gutter assemblies formed into the buoyancy module's exterior. Each gutter carries an umbilical line and is protected by a resilient, elastically deformable gutter cover fitted with a loom tool, closing over the umbilical rather than clamping it externally.Abstract text is drawn directly from the published filing.
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | US4626135A | Marine riser well control method and apparatus | 316 |
| 2 | US6273193B1 | Dynamically positioned, concentric riser, drilling method and apparatus | 307 |
| 3 | US6230824B1 | Rotating subsea diverter | 279 |
| 4 | US6102673A | Subsea mud pump with reduced pulsation | 275 |
| 5 | US6325159B1 | Offshore drilling system | 259 |
| 6 | US6668943B1 | Method and apparatus for controlling pressure and detecting well control problems during drilling of an offsh… | 190 |
| 7 | US20130118752A1 | Managed pressure cementing | 189 |
| 8 | US4210208A | Subsea choke and riser pressure equalization system | 173 |
| 9 | US20080105434A1 | Offshore Universal Riser System | 157 |
| 10 | US4398487A | Fairing for elongated elements | 157 |
Citation counts favour older records simply because they have had more time to be cited — read them as a signal of influence on the field, not as a ranking of current relevance.
Each row carries its publication number; clicking a row searches Eureka by that number.
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Three patterns worth acting on rather than just noting.
The top of the field is dense, the middle is not
Five assignees hold 863 of 2,265 records between them, and the top ten extend that to 1,119, or 49.4% of everything in scope. That leaves roughly half the field spread across ninety more entities in the ranking, most with a handful of filings each — a long tail rather than a second concentrated tier.
Filing volume has cooled from its 2020 peak
Activity peaked in 2020 at 107 filings and has fallen through the last complete reporting years. Several of the largest historical filers show zero filings in the latest year tracked, though that reading should be weighed against publication lag before concluding the field itself has gone quiet.
Claims sit on the wellbore side, not the vessel side
E21B (drilling and wells) appears in 88.7% of records, while B63B (ships and marine vessels) appears in only 12.3%. That gap suggests riser hardware is claimed mostly as drilling equipment rather than as vessel-integrated systems, leaving vessel-side integration comparatively open.
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to marine drilling risers, with the prior art for and against each one.
Who holds the claims
The assignee ranking spans 100 companies counted by patent family. Filing is concentrated at the top but the concentration is partial: half of all activity in scope sits outside the leading ten.
One assignee holds roughly a fifth of the field
The leading assignee's 480 records stand well above the fifth-place figure of 56, indicating a single large filer built a sustained program rather than a cluster of comparable competitors at the very top.
The gap from fifth to tenth is shallow
Fifth place sits at 56 records and tenth place at 48 — a narrow spread that points to several mid-sized programs competing closely rather than one dominant runner-up tier.
Even large historical filers show a quiet latest year
Multiple of the largest-family assignees report zero filings in the most recent tracked year. Given the roughly 18-month publication lag, this is at least partly a reporting artifact rather than confirmed withdrawal from the field.
| Assignee | Recent year | YoY |
|---|---|---|
| Weatherford Technology Holdings LLC | 0 | -100% |
| Weatherford Lamb Inc | 0 | — |
| Itrec B.V. | 0 | — |
| FMC Kongsberg Subsea AS | 0 | — |
| Shell Internationale Research Maatschappij BV | 0 | — |
| DRIL QUIP INC | 0 | — |
| Cameron International Corp | 0 | — |
| Hydril Co | 0 | — |
Where to take this next
The dataset points to specific follow-up questions rather than a single conclusion.
Check vessel-side integration claims
B63B's comparatively low 12.3% share against E21B's 88.7% suggests riser systems are claimed mainly as drilling equipment. A freedom-to-operate check focused specifically on vessel-integrated routing and mounting could surface open space.
Explore in EurekaRe-test the 2021-2024 decline against 2025 filings as they publish
The -39% move from 38 to 23 filings is real for that span, but publication lag means 2025-2026 numbers are still incomplete. Revisit the trend once those years mature before treating the field as shrinking.
Track filings in EurekaMap the mid-field assignees, not just the leader
The shallow gap between fifth (56) and tenth (48) place implies several comparably sized programs. Understanding their specific claim focus may matter more for competitive positioning than watching the single leader alone.
Compare assignees in EurekaCommon questions on 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.
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.
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.
The clearest gap sits between the heavy E21B drilling-hardware coverage (88.7% of records) and the much lighter B63B vessel-integration coverage (12.3%), pointing to vessel-side routing and mounting as comparatively under-claimed. Sub-areas like riser auxiliary-line sensing, VIV suppression tuned for deepwater buoyancy modules, and automated recoil control also show thinner representation relative to core riser-joint and tensioner claims. Any freedom-to-operate work should specifically test these adjacent branches rather than assuming they mirror the density of the core drilling classes.
US20170335634A1, filed by ITREC B.V. and published in 2017, claims a marine drilling riser joint with umbilical gutter assemblies built into the exterior of a buoyancy module, running parallel to the riser pipe. Each gutter holds one or more umbilicals and is covered by a resilient, elastically deformable cover that a loom tool can open and close over the line. The claim scope centers on this integrated gutter-and-cover mechanism for umbilical securement rather than on the riser pipe or buoyancy module generally, which narrows what it actually blocks for other filers working on external umbilical routing designs.
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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.
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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.