Tunnel Boring Machine Patents: Who Leads, Technology Trends 2026
Filing growth compares 2021 (682 records) with 2024 (637) — 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 10,391 records in scope (CR5), not by the ranked leaders only.
What the tunnel boring machine patent record actually shows
Search string TACD:(“Tunnel Boring Machine”) returns 10,391 published records filed or published between 2015 and the 2026-07-31 cut-off. The record set spans classic shield and TBM mechanics alongside adjacent drilling, mine-safety and geophysical survey classes, which is why a machine-specific search still pulls in earth-boring and wellbore-ranging prior art from the oil-and-gas side of the IPC tree.
Reading the trend line requires one caveat: publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, so 2025 and 2026 counts are still filling in and should not be read as a drop-off. The last year that can be treated as complete is 2024, and the filing pattern from 2021 to that year is the fairest basis for judging momentum.
Filing trend and technology composition
Two views of the same 10,391-record set: how filing volume has moved year over year, and which IPC subclasses carry the claims.
Filing trend, 2017-2026
Annual filings climbed from 274 in 2017 to a peak of 703 in 2023, then eased to 637 in 2024 — a -7% move from 682 in 2021, the benchmark the hero card uses. 2025 and 2026 figures (down to 103 for the partial latest year) are still incomplete due to publication lag and should not be read as a real decline.
Technology composition by IPC subclass
E21D (shafts, tunnels and mine support) dominates at 68.2% of the 10,391 records in scope, consistent with a search anchored on tunnel boring machines. Earth and rock drilling (E21B, 9.3%) and mine safety and ventilation (E21F, 6.3%) follow, while digital processing (G06F, 4.2%) and AI-model computing (G06N, 2.4%) mark where computational claims are starting to attach to a mechanical core. Shares sum to more than 100% because a single record can carry multiple IPC classes.
Shares are the percentage of the 10,391 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
Go deeper on Tunneling & Underground Engineering: Tunnel Boring Machine Patent Landscape with Eureka
This page is one run against one query. Ask Eureka your own question about tunneling & underground engineering: tunnel boring machine patent landscape and every answer comes back with the patent numbers behind it.
Try EurekaRepresentative filing and most-cited prior art
Tunnel Boring Machine and Method for Tunneling Using a Tunnel Boring Machine
The invention relates to a tunnel boring machine in which the thrust cylinders acting on a cutting wheel are controlled by means of the direct input of coordinate values of a desired total center of pressure in a coordinate system relating to the tunnel boring machine.Filed by Herrenknecht, published 2024-09-05 — illustrates how thrust-control claims are now framed around coordinate-system inputs rather than purely mechanical linkages.
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | US20170308802A1 | Systems and methods for failure prediction in industrial environments | 309 |
| 2 | US20090189617A1 | Continuous subsurface heater temperature measurement | 258 |
| 3 | US20090194333A1 | Ranging methods for developing wellbores in subsurface formations | 208 |
| 4 | US20100258265A1 | Recovering energy from a subsurface formation | 202 |
| 5 | US3379264A | Earth boring machine | 183 |
| 6 | US20090200290A1 | Variable voltage load tap changing transformer | 182 |
| 7 | US20100089584A1 | Double insulated heaters for treating subsurface formations | 176 |
| 8 | US20090200022A1 | Cryogenic treatment of gas | 170 |
| 9 | US20090200023A1 | Heating subsurface formations by oxidizing fuel on a fuel carrier | 162 |
| 10 | US20090200854A1 | Solution mining and in situ treatment of nahcolite beds | 161 |
Citation counts favour older records simply because they have had longer to accumulate citations inside this searched corpus; treat them as a signal of influence, not of current technical relevance.
Each row carries its publication number; clicking a row searches Eureka by that number.
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Browse MCP servers →What the numbers mean for a filing decision
Three patterns worth acting on before drafting or licensing in this space.
The top of the field is real but not a wall
With the leading assignee at 430 records and the top 5 combined at only 15.5% of all 10,391 records in scope, no single entity has cornered core TBM mechanics. The top 10 combined reach 23.9% — still leaving three-quarters of the corpus to a long tail of national institutes, component suppliers and single-filing entrants.
A plateau after a 2023 peak, not a downturn
Filings rose from 274 in 2017 to a peak of 703 in 2023 before settling at 637 in 2024, a -7% move from the 682 filed in 2021. That is consistent with a technology base that has matured into steady replacement and incremental filing rather than one still in a land-grab phase.
Mechanical core still dominates, software is entering
E21D shafts-and-tunnel-support claims cover 68.2% of the 10,391 records in scope, but G06F digital processing (4.2%) and G06N AI-model computing (2.4%) show a second, smaller wave of claims layering control, prediction and automation logic onto the mechanical base.
State labs and heavy-industry groups file jointly
The strongest co-assignee pairing in the dataset — a major Chinese tunnel-engineering group and a national shield-and-tunneling state key laboratory — appears together on 110 records, well ahead of the next pairing at 57. That kind of institute-industry pairing is a useful signal for where applied research funding is concentrated.
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to tunneling & underground engineering: tunnel boring machine patent landscape, with the prior art for and against each one.
Where to take this next
The dataset points to specific follow-up questions rather than a single verdict on the field.
Check freedom-to-operate on control-system claims
The featured Herrenknecht filing shows thrust control moving toward coordinate-input claim language; any new control-system filing should be checked against this style of claim before drafting.
Explore claim scope in EurekaTrack the software layer as it grows from a small base
G06F and G06N shares are still single-digit percentages of the 10,391 records in scope, but they mark the fastest-growing claim category layered on top of mechanical TBM patents.
Monitor emerging classes in EurekaWatch the long tail for acquisition or licensing targets
With the top 10 assignees holding only 23.9% of all records, the remaining filers include component suppliers and research institutes that may be open to licensing rather than defending broad portfolios.
Screen the long tail in EurekaCommon questions about tunnel boring machine patents
The assignee ranking in this dataset is led by a Chinese state-linked tunnel-engineering group with 430 records, ahead of a cluster of other Chinese heavy-industry firms, Japanese machinery makers and a German TBM specialist. The top 5 assignees combined account for only 15.5% of all 10,391 records in scope, and the top 10 reach 23.9%, so leadership at the top does not translate into control of the field. Most of the corpus sits with a long tail of national institutes, universities and component suppliers filing in smaller numbers.
Filing rose from 274 records in 2017 to a peak of 703 in 2023, then eased to 637 in 2024 — a -7% move from the 682 filed in 2021. That is a plateau after a clear growth period, not a collapse. Figures for 2025 and 2026 look lower still, but that is expected: publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, so the most recent years are always undercounted at the time of any search.
The core mechanical class, E21D covering shafts, tunnels and mine support, appears on 68.2% of the 10,391 records in scope, making it by far the dominant IPC subclass. Earth and rock drilling (E21B) and mine safety and ventilation (E21F) follow at 9.3% and 6.3% respectively. A smaller but notable share of records carry digital-processing (G06F) or AI-model (G06N) classes, showing software and prediction logic increasingly attached to mechanical TBM claims.
Based on the IPC composition, areas like AI-driven cutter-head wear prediction, real-time thrust-to-geology feedback control, and digital twin tunneling simulation carry far fewer records than the core E21D mechanical claims, despite growing interest in automation. These branches sit at the intersection of the small G06F and G06N shares and the dominant mechanical classes, which is exactly where claim space tends to be thinnest. A freedom-to-operate search focused on these specific sub-areas is more useful than a broad TBM search.
It is moderately concentrated at the very top but open beneath that. The leading assignee alone holds 430 of the 10,391 records, and the top 5 combined reach only 15.5% of all records in scope, with the top 10 at 23.9%. That leaves more than three-quarters of the corpus distributed across a long tail of single- and few-filing entities, including universities, state laboratories and smaller equipment suppliers.
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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.