CPC technology class · B61

B61J — Shifting OR Shunting OF RAIL Vehicles

Shifting or shunting of rail vehicles. 51 US utility patents granted 2015–2025, with the leading assignees and year-by-year filing trajectory.

51
US patents granted
B61
Parent CPC class
7
Active assignees
+27%
5-yr velocity
Top assignee: Transportation IP Holdings, LLC (5 patents)

CPC subclass B61J — SHIFTING OR SHUNTING OF RAIL VEHICLES — covers 51 US utility patents granted between 2015 and 2025 according to USPTO PatentsView records. This subclass sits within the broader CPC class B61 (RAILWAYS), one of roughly 250 top-level technology categories in the Cooperative Patent Classification system jointly maintained by the USPTO and the European Patent Office. At the subclass level, four-character codes like B61J give the most practical resolution for tracking a specific technology domain without losing sight of adjacent filings. Every grant here has been classified by a USPTO examiner based on the technical disclosure in the patent specification.

The competitive landscape in B61J is shaped by 7 distinct companies actively filing in this space. Transportation IP Holdings, LLC leads with 5 patents, followed by Trackmobile LLC at 6 grants and Nordco Inc. at 31. Concentration at the top of the leaderboard indicates whether this technology area is dominated by a handful of incumbents or fragmented across many filers — a useful signal for investors evaluating competitive moats and for product teams mapping freedom-to-operate risk.

Filing trajectory matters as much as static counts. The yearly series on this page plots grants from 2015 through 2025, highlighting whether innovation in B61J is accelerating, plateauing, or cooling. Technology areas with rising post-2020 activity often reflect emerging markets or new platform shifts, while declining filings can signal mature domains where incremental improvement has slowed. Researchers, licensing professionals, and competitive-intelligence teams use these patterns — together with the top-assignee distribution — to decide where to invest, where to license, and where to avoid entanglement. All counts on this page come directly from USPTO PatentsView and reflect US granted utility patents only.

Is B61J innovation accelerating?

US utility-patent grants per year in B61J, 2015–2025 — recent five years are up 27% versus 2015–2019.

0246810 20152016201720182019202020212022202320242025 6

Who leads B61J?

The 12 most active assignees in SHIFTING OR SHUNTING OF RAIL VEHICLES — wider bars mean more grants

patents

What this shows Transportation Ip Hol… is the most active filer in B61J, holding 5 of the 51 patents in this class. Concentration at the top signals how contestable this technology area is for new entrants.

Source USPTO PatentsView — granted utility patents As of 2015–2025 grant years
View data table
Top patent holders in CPC subclass B61J
Rank Company Patents in B61J
#1 Macton Corporation 8
#2 Trackmobile LLC 6
#3 Nordco Inc. 31
#4 MACK RIDES GMBH & CO. KG 23
#5 STEWART & STEVENSON LLC 22
#6 SIEMENS VAI METALS TECHNOLOGIES GMBH 18
#7 S.A.S. of Luxemburg, LLC 10

About This Class

CPC subclass B61J belongs to class B61.

51 patents were granted in this class between 2015 and 2025.

7 companies actively patent in this space.

Classification System

Cooperative Patent Classification (CPC) is a hierarchical patent classification system used by the USPTO and EPO.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is CPC class B61J?
CPC subclass B61J covers SHIFTING OR SHUNTING OF RAIL VEHICLES. It belongs to CPC class B61 (RAILWAYS). The Cooperative Patent Classification is a hierarchical system used by the USPTO and European Patent Office to categorize patents by technology.
How many patents have been filed in B61J?
51 US utility patents were granted in CPC subclass B61J between 2015 and 2025, based on USPTO PatentsView data.
Which company holds the most patents in B61J?
Transportation IP Holdings, LLC leads B61J with 5 patents, making it the most active assignee in this technology area.
How is patent data for B61J collected?
Patent data comes from USPTO PatentsView, a public research dataset maintained by the United States Patent and Trademark Office. It covers all US granted utility patents and assigns CPC codes based on the technology described in each patent.
What is the difference between CPC class and subclass?
A CPC class (e.g., B61) is a broad technology category. Subclasses like B61J provide finer granularity within that category. PlainPatent organizes data at the subclass level (4-character codes) for the most useful view of technology domains.

Learn More

Explore the patent dataset

Data sourced from USPTO PatentsView — official U.S. government patent data. See our methodology for computation details. Retrieved and formatted by PlainPatent Editorial