Subsea Cable Burial Patents: Who Leads, Where the Gaps Are 2026
Filing growth compares 2021 (50 records) with 2024 (53) — 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 852 records in scope (CR5), not by the ranked leaders only.
What the subsea cable burial patent record shows
Subsea cable burial sits at the intersection of geophysical survey, earth-moving machinery and marine vessel engineering — a combination visible directly in the IPC spread of this dataset. The 852 records published between 2015 and mid-2026 cluster around three overlapping problems: locating and characterising the seabed ahead of a plough or jetting tool (G01V), installing the power or signal cable itself (H02G), and physically excavating or covering the trench (E02F). A fourth cluster, drilling and well-related classes (E21B), points to crossover from offshore oil and gas trenching technique into cable burial, and B63B/B63G vessel classes confirm that much of the claimed innovation is embedded in purpose-built burial vessels and ROVs rather than the cable or trench alone.
Filing activity peaked in 2019 at 82 records and has settled into a lower, steadier band since — publication lag of roughly 18 months means the last one to two years in any chart will always look thinner than they eventually turn out to be. Receiving-office data shows the United States as the largest single office (227), with EPO, WIPO/PCT, UK and Australian filings each representing meaningful parallel coverage, consistent with an industry that installs cable across multiple national waters and files accordingly.
Filing trend and technology composition
Two views of the same 852-record dataset: filing activity by year, and the IPC subclasses that carry the claimed technology. Because a single record can carry several IPC codes, the technology shares below sum to more than 100% of records.
Filing trend, 2017-2026
Volume rose from 45 records in 2017 to a peak of 82 in 2019, before settling into a steadier band; 2021 to 2024 (the last complete year) moved from 50 to 53 records, a +6% gain. 2025-2026 figures are still filling in as publications catch up to filings.
IPC subclass composition
G01V (geophysics/survey), H02G (cable installation) and E02F (excavation) are each present in roughly a sixth to a fifth of all 852 records, with B63B marine vessels, E21B drilling and B63G naval vessel classes forming a secondary tier, and F03B and F16L trailing as smaller but present threads.
Shares are the percentage of the 852 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
Go deeper on Subsea Engineering: Subsea Cable Burial Patent Landscape with Eureka
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Try EurekaA representative recent filing
Employing load temperature correlation analysis for burial state analysis of an electrical power cable
The method estimates the burial state of a subsea electrical power cable by combining electrical load data with distributed temperature measurements taken along the cable at the same points in time. For each measured location, the method derives a location-specific covariance-related quantity linking load and temperature over time, using that correlation as the basis for inferring whether the cable is buried, exposed, or at some intermediate state — without a physical burial-depth survey.Filed by AP Sensing GmbH, published 2024-09-26.
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | US6223675B1 | Underwater power and data relay | 218 |
| 2 | US20100000791A1 | Method to detect formation pore pressure from resistivity measurements ahead of the bit during drilling of a … | 215 |
| 3 | US20100258265A1 | Recovering energy from a subsurface formation | 202 |
| 4 | US6167831B1 | Underwater vehicle | 197 |
| 5 | US20190353139A1 | Inertial pneumatic wave energy device | 149 |
| 6 | US20100258309A1 | Heater assisted fluid treatment of a subsurface formation | 132 |
| 7 | US7126338B2 | Electromagnetic surveying for hydrocarbon reservoirs | 113 |
| 8 | US20200056578A1 | Inertial hydrodynamic pump and wave engine | 107 |
| 9 | US6257162B1 | Underwater latch and power supply | 107 |
| 10 | US20100258291A1 | Heated liners for treating subsurface hydrocarbon containing formations | 103 |
Citation counts favour older records simply by virtue of time in circulation; treat them as a signal of influence within this corpus, not a ranking of current technical importance.
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Three figures matter most when deciding where to file or search for prior art: how concentrated ownership is, which technology classes are dense, and how filing activity has actually moved rather than how it feels.
A lead group, then a long tail
The top 5 assignees combined account for 262 of 852 records in scope — 30.8% of the field — while the leader alone holds 169. The top 10 extend that to 39.6% (337 records), meaning well over half the field is spread across the remaining ranked companies and unranked single-filers.
Survey and installation classes lead
G01V, H02G and E02F each appear in roughly a sixth to a fifth of all 852 records, confirming that seabed characterisation, cable installation hardware and trenching/excavation are the three most heavily claimed problem areas, ahead of drilling, naval vessel and hydraulic machinery classes.
Steady rather than surging
Filings moved from 50 records in 2021 to 53 in 2024, the last year that can be treated as complete given an 18-month publication lag. That is modest, sustained activity rather than the sharp uptick or decline that headline peak-year figures (82 in 2019) might suggest on their own.
Multi-jurisdiction filing is standard practice
The United States leads as a single receiving office, with EPO, WIPO/PCT, UK and Australian offices each carrying a substantial share of the same underlying inventions, reflecting an industry that lays cable across many national waters and files in parallel rather than in one home jurisdiction.
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to subsea engineering: subsea cable burial patent landscape, with the prior art for and against each one.
Where to take this analysis
The dataset points to specific next steps depending on whether the goal is freedom-to-operate, portfolio benchmarking, or identifying open filing space.
Check freedom-to-operate against the lead group
With 30.8% of records held by the top 5 assignees, any new burial-depth sensing or trenching tool claim should be checked against that concentrated group before drafting, particularly where G01V and H02G classes overlap.
Run a freedom-to-operate search in EurekaTrack momentum, not just headline share
Several ranked assignees show zero filings in the latest tracked year even while holding sizeable historical portfolios; monitoring which companies are still actively filing versus holding a static position changes where competitive risk actually sits.
Set up assignee monitoring in EurekaProbe the under-claimed branches directly
Distributed sensing for burial-state monitoring and hydraulic/pipe crossover classes show thinner representation than the core trenching and survey classes, suggesting room for narrowly drafted claims that avoid the densest prior art.
Explore white space in EurekaCommon questions about subsea cable burial patents
One assignee leads the ranked field with 169 records, well ahead of the fifth-ranked company at 19 and tenth-ranked at 12. That gap between the leader and the rest of the ranking indicates a genuine market leader rather than a tightly bunched top tier. However, recent-year momentum data shows even this leading assignee's filing pace has slowed with a -40% year-on-year change, so historical share and current filing activity are not the same thing.
Geophysical survey (IPC class G01V, 18.9% of the 852 records), cable installation hardware (H02G, 18.0%) and excavation/trenching equipment (E02F, 17.7%) are the three most heavily represented classes. Marine vessel design (B63B) and drilling technique carried over from offshore oil and gas (E21B) form a secondary tier. Because records often carry multiple classes, these figures overlap rather than partition the dataset.
Filing peaked in 2019 at 82 records and has settled lower since, but the most reliable recent comparison — 2021 versus 2024, the last year that can be treated as complete — shows a modest +6% increase, from 50 to 53 records. Publication typically lags actual filing by around 18 months, so 2025 and 2026 figures in any chart will understate true activity and should not be read as a decline.
The top 5 assignees together hold 262 of the 852 records in scope, or 30.8% of the field, and the top 10 extend that to 39.6% (337 records). That leaves roughly 60% of records spread across the remaining ranked companies and a long tail of smaller or single-filing entrants, meaning the field has a clear leadership group but is far from a duopoly or oligopoly.
Relative to the dense G01V, H02G and E02F classes, areas like real-time burial-depth sensing using correlated load and temperature data, hydraulic machinery integration for burial tools, and pipe-and-cable co-burial fittings show thinner representation in this dataset. These adjacent branches connect to the core trenching and survey technology without sitting directly inside the most heavily claimed classes, which is generally where narrower, more defensible claims are easier to draft.
The United States receiving office leads with 227 records, followed by the European Patent Office (113), WIPO/PCT filings (104), the United Kingdom (101) and Australia (77), with Norway also represented at 41. This spread reflects an industry that installs cable across many national waters and routinely files the same invention through several offices rather than concentrating in one home jurisdiction.
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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.