Reaming and Hole Enlargement Tools Patents: Leaders & Trends 2026
- Concentrated at the top. the five leading assignees together hold 64.3% of all 2,174 records in scope, and the ranked leaders extend that to 79.3% among the top ten.
- Filing has cooled from its 2017 peak. the peak year of 50 filings has given way to a documented -30% change from 2021 (10) to 2024 (7), the last year treated as complete.
- Almost everything sits in one IPC subclass. E21B earth and rock drilling accounts for 94.7% of records, leaving every adjacent subclass — coatings, sensing, data processing — in single digits of share.
Filing growth compares 2021 (10 records) with 2024 (7) — 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 2,174 records in scope (CR5), not by the ranked leaders only.
What this landscape covers
Reaming and hole enlargement tools sit at the mechanical core of wellbore construction: hole openers, underreamers and expandable reamers that widen a pilot bore after or during drilling. The scope here is defined by claims combining that function language with structural elements — cutter blocks, hydraulic activation pistons, stabilizer blades and related borehole-enlargement hardware — so the dataset captures the mechanical and hydraulic implementation of reaming rather than drilling generally.
The 2,174 records in scope span 2015 through the 2026-07-31 cut-off, with receiving-office data showing the United States, United Kingdom, Europe and Canada as the primary jurisdictions where this technology is being protected.
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Filing trend and technology composition
Two views of the same 2,174 records: how filing activity has moved year over year, and how it distributes across IPC subclasses.
Filing trend, 2017–2026
Filings peaked at 50 in 2017. The most recent complete three-year comparison, 2021 (10) to 2024 (7), shows a -30% change; 2025 and 2026 figures are still filling in under the roughly 18-month publication lag and should not be read as a continued decline.
IPC subclass distribution
E21B (earth and rock drilling, wells) covers 94.7% of the 2,174 records in scope. No other subclass reaches 2%: B26B hand-held cutting tools sits at 1.5%, and G01V, E21C, C23C, B05B, G06F and C09K each sit at or below 0.9%, indicating that claim activity outside the core drilling mechanism is thin.
Shares are the percentage of the 2,174 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
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Try EurekaA representative claim construction
Expandable reamer assemblies, bottom hole assemblies, and related methods
Expandable reamer assemblies include an expandable reamer module and an activation module. An outer tubular body of the activation module is rigidly coupled to a tubular body of the expandable reamer module, and an activation member of the activation module is coupled to a sleeve of the expandable reamer module, the sleeve coupled to at least one blade and configured to move the at least one blade into an extended position. The sleeve moves axially responsive to axial movement of the activation member.Filed by Baker Hughes; published 2018-11-22.
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Read together, the concentration figures, the trend and the IPC split point to a field where the core mechanism is heavily claimed but the periphery is not.
The core mechanism is largely spoken for
Five assignees hold 64.3% of all 2,174 records in scope, and the top ten extend that to 79.3%. New entrants filing on the same core expandable-reamer or hydraulic-activation architecture are filing into dense prior art held by a small number of incumbents.
Momentum has eased from a 2017 peak
Filing activity peaked at 50 in 2017 and has settled at a lower plateau since; the -30% change from 2021 to 2024 is the most recent complete comparison available. Years after 2024 will revise upward as publication catches up.
One IPC subclass dominates
E21B covers 94.7% of records, meaning almost all claim activity treats reaming as a mechanical drilling problem. Adjacent subclasses tied to coatings, sensing and data processing each sit under 2% — thin enough that a well-drafted claim there faces little crowding.
Filing activity clusters within corporate families
The strongest co-assignee pairings link entities inside the same corporate group rather than cross-company joint filings, consistent with reaming IP being managed as an internal portfolio rather than through outside collaboration.
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to reaming and hole enlargement tools, with the prior art for and against each one.
Leaders and the long tail
A small set of oilfield service majors accounts for most of the record volume, with recent-year momentum data showing filing activity has slowed even among the leaders.
One assignee sets the pace by a wide margin
The leading assignee holds 552 records, more than five times the fifth-place figure of 106, and roughly ten times the tenth-place figure of 52. That gap defines the top of this field far more than the tail does.
The drop-off is steep after the leader
Fifth place holds 106 records and tenth place holds 52 — roughly half again, showing the ranked leaders thin out quickly rather than forming a flat plateau of similarly sized filers.
Recent-year filing has slowed across the named leaders
Recent-year momentum data shows the leading Schlumberger entity down to 1 filing in the latest year, a -50% year-on-year change, while several other major assignees show 0 filings in the latest year. Given the publication lag, this understates true recent activity but still signals a plateau rather than a filing race.
| Assignee | Recent year | YoY |
|---|---|---|
| Schlumberger Technology Corporation | 1 | -50% |
| Baker Hughes Holdings LLC | 0 | — |
| Smith International, Inc. | 0 | — |
| Weatherford/Lamb, Inc. | 0 | — |
| Weatherford Technology Holdings, LLC | 0 | — |
| TESCO CORP | 0 | — |
| Schlumberger Technology Corporation | 0 | -100% |
| Schlumberger Holdings Limited | 0 | — |
Where to take this next
The figures above describe where the field has been. Two follow-on questions matter more for a live filing decision: what a specific blocking claim actually covers, and where a first claim could still land clean.
Map the blocking claims around a target design
Pull the independent claim scope of the leading assignees' core patents before drafting around expandable-reamer or hydraulic-activation architectures.
Explore claim scope in EurekaTest a white-space claim before filing
Run a novelty check against the thin adjacent IPC subclasses — coatings, sensing, data processing — before committing drafting resources.
Run a novelty check in EurekaFrequently asked questions
One assignee leads with 552 records, well ahead of the fifth-place holder at 106 and tenth place at 52. Together the five leading assignees account for 64.3% of all 2,174 records in scope, and the top ten reach 79.3%. That concentration means most of the core expandable-reamer and hydraulic-activation architecture is already claimed by a small number of oilfield service majors, so due diligence on freedom to operate should start with those names before looking at the long tail.
Filing peaked at 50 in 2017 and has settled lower since. The most recent complete comparison, 2021 (10) to 2024 (7), shows a -30% change, which is the figure to use for any growth statement about this field. Data for 2025 and 2026 is still incomplete because publication typically lags filing by around 18 months, so those years should not yet be read as confirming a continued decline.
The core mechanical drilling function, classified under IPC subclass E21B, covers 94.7% of the 2,174 records in scope and is heavily claimed by the leading assignees. Everything else is thin by comparison: coating chemistries, geophysical sensing, data processing and specialised drilling fluid materials each sit at or under about 1.5% of records, which is where a new entrant has the best chance of a claim that does not collide with existing prior art.
This Baker Hughes filing claims an expandable reamer assembly built from a reamer module and a separate activation module, where an activation member moves a sleeve axially to push at least one blade into an extended position. The claim value sits in the specific mechanical coupling between the activation module's outer tubular body and the reamer module's tubular body, and in how axial movement of the activation member is translated into blade extension. Anyone designing a hydraulically activated expandable reamer needs to check whether their sleeve-and-blade actuation path falls inside that coupling structure.
Highly concentrated at the top and long-tailed below it. The leading assignee alone holds 552 of the 2,174 records in scope, the top five hold 64.3% combined, and the top ten hold 79.3% combined. Below the ranked leaders, filing activity thins out quickly, which is typical of a mature oilfield-equipment category where a handful of service majors manage large in-house portfolios rather than a wide field of smaller filers competing for share.
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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.