Shaft Sinking and Shaft Equipping Patents
77.9% concentration. The top five assignees combine for 116 of the 149 records in scope — this is a field owned by a handful of specialist sinking contractors and equipment builders, not a broad industry. Annual filings ran at 5 in 2017 and rose to a peak of 10 in 2018. The apparent falloff toward 2026, ending at 0, is expected: recent filings have not yet cleared examination and publication, not evidence that sinking innovation has stopped.
- 1TECHNOLOGICAL RESOURCES PTY LTD55
- 2TRIOMVIRI PTY LTD TRADING AS THE GROBLER PARTNERSHIP19
- 3RELBORGN PTY LTD19
- 4MASTER SINKERS PTY LTD14
- 5HARRISON WESTERN A FLA9
See the full shaft sinking and shaft equipping 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
Frequently asked questions
Who holds the most patents in shaft sinking and shaft equipping?
Ownership in this dataset is highly concentrated: the top-ranked assignee alone holds 55 of the 149 records in scope, and the top five assignees together account for 77.9% of all records. The ranking covers 27 companies in total, with the fifth-place holder at 9 records and tenth place at only 5. This means a small number of specialist sinking contractors and drilling-equipment builders control most of the documented claim space, rather than activity being spread across the broader mining supply chain.
What technology areas do shaft sinking patents actually cover?
The core of the field sits in IPC class E21D, shafts, tunnels and mine support, which appears on 60.4% of the 149 records. E21B, earth and rock drilling for wells, is the next largest at 30.9%, reflecting how often shaft boring machinery and ground-control methods are claimed in the same filing. Secondary classes include B66B (lifts and escalators, 22.8%) for shaft equipping and hoisting, and E21F (mine safety and ventilation, 15.4%); because a single record can carry multiple classes, these shares add up to more than 100% of records.
Why does the patent filing trend show a drop toward 2026?
The apparent decline is a data artefact, not a real slowdown. Patent publication typically lags the actual filing date by around 18 months, so records filed in 2025 and 2026 have largely not yet appeared in the published dataset. Filing activity peaked at 10 records in 2018, and later years should be read with that lag in mind rather than as a genuine drop-off in R&D.
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 Shaft Sinking and Shaft Equipping 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.