Pipe Bursting Patents: Who Leads, Where the Gaps Are 2026
- 63.0% of all 243 records sit with just five assignees, and 80.2% with ten — a field where the claim space at the core is already tightly held.
- Filing peaked in 2017 at 9 records and the 2021-to-2024 span shows a -25% change, though 2025-2026 figures are still filling in as publications lag filing.
- F16L pipe-and-fitting claims cover 77.4% of records while body-fluid handling (A61M) and percussive tooling (B25D) sit at just 4.5% each — a visible gap between core and adjacent claims.
Filing growth compares 2021 (4 records) with 2024 (3) — 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 243 records in scope (CR5), not by the ranked leaders only.
What the pipe bursting patent record actually shows
Pipe bursting and trenchless pipe replacement patents cluster around a narrow set of mechanical problems: how a bursting head fractures or displaces a host pipe, how a pull rod and winch deliver force through the bore, and how the new pipe is upsized and reconnected to service without excavation. The 243 records in scope run from 2015 through the 2026 cut-off, and the assignee ranking already tells most of the concentration story before any chart is drawn: a leader with 60 records sits well ahead of a fifth-place holder at 15 and a tenth-place holder at 5.
That shape — one leader, a mid-tier of firms in the low teens, then a long tail of single- or few-filing entrants — is typical of a mechanically mature field where the dominant force-delivery and head-design claims were staked out early and later filers work around them rather than through them.
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Filing trends and technology composition
The two views below — filings by year and IPC subclass composition — use the same 243-record scope and are the clearest way to see where the field is dense and where it thins out.
Filing activity, 2017 peak to present
Filings peaked at 9 in 2017. The 2021-to-2024 window, the last span treatable as complete, shows a -25% change (4 to 3); 2025 and 2026 counts will keep rising as later publications catch up, so they should not be read as a slowdown yet.
Where claims concentrate by IPC subclass
F16L (pipes and pipe fittings) touches 77.4% of the 243 records, with E21B (earth and rock drilling) at 33.3% and B66D (winches and capstans) at 23.5% behind it. Because records can carry multiple classes, these shares sum past 100% — the useful reading is relative density, not a partition of the field. A61M and B25D each sit at only 4.5%, marking the thinnest-claimed adjacent branches in scope.
Shares are the percentage of the 243 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
Go deeper on Pipe Bursting and Trenchless Replacement with Eureka
This page is one run against one query. Ask Eureka your own question about pipe bursting and trenchless replacement and every answer comes back with the patent numbers behind it.
Try EurekaThe most-cited records in this field
US20080023226A1 — Bore hole reaming apparatus and method
A bore hole reaming apparatus which is characterized by one or more cleaning devices such as bursting heads attached to a pull rod and typically having one or more mandrels attached thereto in tandem for pulling a length of pipe through a pre-bored opening using a pulling apparatus. In a typical embodiment the bore hole reaming apparatus is characterized by a pair of bursting heads mounted in spaced-apart relationship in tandem on the pull rod and fitted with one or more mandrels attached to a third bursting head.Filed by Putnam, Samuel W. — illustrates the multi-head, tandem-mandrel design pattern that recurs across the most-cited records in this set.
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | US6176523B1 | Joint for variable wall thickness conduit | 91 |
| 2 | US6357967B1 | Apparatus for bursting and replacing pipe | 74 |
| 3 | US5782311A | Method and apparatus for installation of underground pipes | 69 |
| 4 | US6109832A | Ram burster and method for installing tubular casing underground | 67 |
| 5 | US20020081154A1 | Underground pipe bursting head | 61 |
| 6 | US5547230A | Joint for variable wall thickness conduit | 59 |
| 7 | US6761507B2 | Method and apparatus for replacement of underground pipe | 51 |
| 8 | US6672802B2 | Vertical pull apparatus | 49 |
| 9 | US20040218982A1 | Pipe bursting and replacement apparatus and method | 46 |
| 10 | US20050062030A1 | Winch with telescoping mast | 41 |
Citation counts inside a searched corpus favour older filings — read this as a map of foundational influence, not of what matters most today.
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Browse MCP servers →What the concentration and citation data mean for filing strategy
Three patterns stand out once the ranking, the citation table, and the IPC composition are read together.
The core claim space is already held
With 63.0% of all 243 records sitting under five assignees and 80.2% under ten, new entrants filing on core bursting-head geometry or basic pull-rod mechanics are filing into dense prior art. The leader alone holds 60 records against a tenth-place count of 5.
Foundational claims date from the late 1990s
The most-cited record, US6176523B1, and its near-peers (US6357967B1, US5782311A, US6109832A) were filed decades before the 2015 window this dataset covers. Their citation counts reflect age and foundational status inside a searched corpus, not present-day relevance.
Adjacent branches are comparatively open
F16L pipe-and-fitting claims dominate at 77.4%, but body-fluid handling (A61M) and percussive tooling (B25D) each sit at only 4.5% of records — a visible thinning at the edges of the core mechanical claim set.
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to pipe bursting and trenchless replacement, with the prior art for and against each one.
| Assignee | Co-assignee | Shared families |
|---|---|---|
| CARTER ROBERT WARD | DING ROBERT M J | 6 |
| CARTER ROBERT WARD | DARROW MAXWELL FRANK | 5 |
| CARTER ROBERT WARD | CRAFTS DAVID B | 5 |
| PALETTA STEPHEN | LONG | 5 |
| WENTWORTH STEVEN W | CRANE ROBERT F | 3 |
| CARTER ROBERT WARD | NEAG NICOLAE | 2 |
| CARTER ROBERT WARD | DING ROBERT | 2 |
| AMBLER EDWARD ALAN | EDWARD AMBLER | 2 |
Only 10 co-assignee pairs appear in the dataset, and the strongest links all run through one individual assignee (Carter Robert Ward, paired variously with Ding Robert M J, Darrow Maxwell Frank, and Crafts David B) — collaboration in this field is the exception, not the norm.
The assignee landscape
The ranking covers 52 companies and individual inventors returned by the data endpoint — this is the whole ranking, not a top-50 or top-100 cut, and it is dominated by a small group of specialist equipment makers and named inventors.
One firm sets the pace
The leading assignee's 60 records dwarf the fifth-place count of 15, a gap wide enough that its bursting-head and pull-rod claims function as the reference point the rest of the field files around.
A compact group of specialist filers
Places two through five cluster around 15 records each, made up of the equipment manufacturers and tooling specialists that supply the trenchless-replacement contractor market.
Individual inventors fill out the tail
Beyond the top ten, filing counts drop to single digits fast, with several named individual inventors rather than corporations holding the remaining records — a sign of a field still accessible to independent tool designers.
| Assignee | Recent year | YoY |
|---|---|---|
| TT Technology Inc. | 1 | 0% |
| EARTH TOOL COMPANY LLC | 0 | — |
| RODDIE INC | 0 | -100% |
| PUTNAM SAMUEL W | 0 | — |
| CARTER ROBERT WARD | 0 | — |
| PALETTA STEPHEN | 0 | — |
| TITAN CMP SOLUTIONS LLC | 0 | — |
| DING ROBERT M J | 0 | — |
Where to take this analysis
The dataset points to a field with a settled core and a thinner, more open periphery. Two directions follow from that.
Pressure-test a filing against the core five
Before drafting claims on bursting-head geometry or pull-rod mechanics, check them against the leader's 60-record portfolio and the fifth-place holder's 15 — the density there means narrow, specific claims travel further than broad ones.
Run a claim check in Eureka →Scope the thinner branches directly
A61M and B25D sit at 4.5% of records each, and service-reconnection and upsizing-ratio control show up far less than core F16L claims — these are the branches worth a freedom-to-operate search before committing R&D spend.
Explore white space in Eureka →Common questions about pipe bursting patents
The assignee ranking in this dataset is led by a single company with 60 records, well ahead of the fifth-place holder at 15 and the tenth-place holder at 5. The top five assignees combined account for 63.0% of all 243 records in scope, and the top ten account for 80.2%. That concentration means most of the foundational bursting-head and pull-rod mechanics are already claimed by a small group of specialist equipment makers rather than spread across the industry.
Filing peaked in 2017 at 9 records in this dataset, and the last span that can be treated as complete, 2021 to 2024, shows a -25% change from 4 to 3 records. Figures for 2025 and 2026 are still incomplete because publication typically lags filing by around 18 months, so it is premature to call the recent years a decline. The honest read is that the field has cooled from its 2017 peak but the most recent trend line is not yet fully visible.
F16L, the pipes-and-pipe-fittings classification, appears in 77.4% of the 243 records in scope, making it by far the densest area. E21B (earth and rock drilling) follows at 33.3% and B66D (winches and capstans) at 23.5%. Because a single patent can carry multiple IPC classes, these percentages add up to more than 100% — they describe relative density across the corpus, not a strict breakdown of it.
The thinnest-claimed subclasses in this dataset are A61M (devices for body fluids) and B25D (percussive tools), each at just 4.5% of the 243 records, compared with 77.4% for the core F16L pipe-fitting class. Sub-areas like service reconnection fittings, upsizing-ratio control, and ground-displacement monitoring show up far less often than core bursting-head and pull-rod claims, suggesting these are where a new filer has more room to stake out a defensible position.
US20080023226A1, filed by Putnam, Samuel W. and titled 'Bore hole reaming apparatus and method,' describes a bore hole reaming apparatus using one or more bursting heads attached to a pull rod, with mandrels attached in tandem to pull pipe through a pre-bored opening. Its representative embodiment uses a pair of spaced bursting heads on the pull rod plus additional heads connected by mandrel and cable, feeding into a string of pipe, typically HDPE, being pulled through the bore. Anyone designing tandem multi-head bursting tools in this space should read its full claim set before finalizing a mechanism, since it sits squarely in the most heavily cited cluster of this dataset's records.
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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.