AEB Patents: Who Leads, Where the Gaps Are 2026
Filing growth compares 2021 (354 records) with 2024 (269) — 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 6,136 records in scope (CR5), not by the ranked leaders only.
What the automatic emergency braking patent record shows
Automatic emergency braking (AEB) sits at the intersection of sensing, vehicle dynamics and driver-warning logic, and the patent record reflects that breadth: 6,136 records in scope span classes from vehicle braking hardware to traffic control systems and rail applications. The search string used here captures both explicit AEB terminology and the combination of automatic, emergency and braking concepts, so the corpus includes both narrowly-titled AEB filings and broader collision-avoidance disclosures that touch the same claim space. Patent families are used in the ranking rather than raw publication counts, which reduces the distortion from continuation filings and multi-jurisdiction refiling by the same applicant.
Filing activity rose through the late 2010s, peaked in 2022, and has pulled back through the most recent complete year of data. Because publication typically lags filing by around 18 months, the 2025 and 2026 figures in the trend chart are still filling in and should not be read as a slowdown in R&D activity. Receiving-office data shows China and the United States as the largest filing jurisdictions by a wide margin, consistent with where much of the underlying automotive supply base and OEM R&D is concentrated.
Filing trend and technology composition
Two views of the same 6,136-record corpus: how filing volume has moved year over year, and which IPC subclasses carry the claim density.
A decade of AEB filing activity
Filings climbed from 242 in 2017 to a peak of 357 in 2022, then eased to 269 by 2024 — a 24% decline over that three-year window. The 2025–2026 figures are still incomplete due to publication lag and should not be read as a definitive drop-off.
Where the claims sit
Vehicle brakes and braking (B60T) carries the largest share at 38.1% of records, with hybrid/joint vehicle control (B60W) second at 20.3%. Lighting, accessories, traffic control, propulsion and rail-specific classes each sit at 4-6%, showing meaningful but comparatively thin activity outside the two core classes.
Shares are the percentage of the 6,136 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
Go deeper on Advanced Driver-Assistance Systems: Automatic Emergency Braking Patent Landscape with Eureka
This page is one run against one query. Ask Eureka your own question about advanced driver-assistance systems: automatic emergency braking patent landscape and every answer comes back with the patent numbers behind it.
Try EurekaA representative claim and the most-cited prior art
Method for triggering an automatic emergency braking process with variable warning time period
The patent describes triggering an automatic emergency braking process to avoid a tail-end collision: a driver warning fires when a warning condition is met based on the instantaneous driving situation relative to an obstacle, and the automatic braking itself is withheld until after that warning has been issued and a warning time period — set as a function of the driving situation — has elapsed.Filed by Knorr-Bremse Systeme für Nutzfahrzeuge, published 2020-09-15.
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | US20130201316A1 | System and method for server based control | 1,727 |
| 2 | US20200294401A1 | A Method and Apparatus for Collecting and Using Sensor Data from a Vehicle | 615 |
| 3 | US20200389469A1 | System and method for tunnel-based malware detection | 532 |
| 4 | US6542077B2 | Monitoring apparatus for a vehicle and/or a premises | 509 |
| 5 | US4361202A | Automated road transportation system | 497 |
| 6 | US20140300739A1 | Vehicle security with accident notification and embedded driver analytics | 489 |
| 7 | US20010018628A1 | System for monitoring vehicle efficiency and vehicle and driver perfomance | 356 |
| 8 | US6012012A | Method and system for determining dynamic traffic information | 329 |
| 9 | US20150094914A1 | Method and apparatus for biological evaluation | 319 |
| 10 | US20200064444A1 | Method, apparatus, and system for human identification based on human radio biometric information | 295 |
Citation counts favour older documents simply because they have had more time to accumulate citations inside the searched corpus — treat this as a signal of influence on the field, not of current commercial relevance.
Each row carries its publication number; clicking a row searches Eureka by that number.
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Browse MCP servers →What the concentration and composition figures mean for strategy
Three findings from the ranking and classification data that should shape where a new filer looks first, and where they should expect to compete against dense prior art.
No single company controls the field
The ranked leader holds 256 records out of 6,136, and even combined, the top 5 assignees account for only 9.0% of all records in scope. That is a fragmented landscape rather than one gated by two or three dominant players — a new entrant is more likely to be competing against many small clusters of prior art than a single blocking portfolio.
Disclosure volume has eased from its 2022 peak
Filings rose to a peak of 357 in 2022 before declining to 269 by 2024, a 24% pullback over that three-year span. Given the roughly 18-month gap between filing and publication, this reflects the most reliable complete-year comparison available and should not be extended into a claim about 2025 or 2026 activity.
Braking hardware still carries the bulk of claim density
Vehicle brakes and braking (B60T) covers 38.1% of the 6,136 records, more than any other class, with hybrid/joint vehicle control (B60W) second at 20.3%. Classes tied to adjacent domains — traffic control, propulsion, rail signalling — each sit at 4-6%, suggesting the connective logic between AEB and those domains is comparatively less claimed.
Filing activity is led by China and the US by a wide margin
China's receiving office accounts for 2,027 records and the United States 1,158, together well ahead of Europe, the UK, South Korea and Japan. That spread signals where competitive clearance and freedom-to-operate work is likely to matter most for a company shipping AEB-equipped vehicles into those markets.
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to advanced driver-assistance systems: automatic emergency braking patent landscape, with the prior art for and against each one.
Turning this landscape into a filing or freedom-to-operate decision
The figures above describe where claim density sits today. Deciding whether a specific concept is clear to file, or whether an existing patent blocks a planned feature, requires reading the actual claim language against your design.
Check a specific claim against this corpus
Run a proposed AEB feature — a warning-time calculation, a sensor-fusion trigger, a rail or fleet-specific variant — against the representative filing and the most-cited records to see how close existing claims sit.
Ask Eureka about a claim →Map the white space in under-claimed classes
Classes like traffic control, rail signalling and electric propulsion carry comparatively thin AEB-specific claim density. Explore where a first claim in those combinations would sit relative to existing filings.
Explore white space in Eureka →Common questions about the AEB patent landscape
The ranked leader in this corpus holds 256 records out of 6,136 in scope, but no single company dominates the field overall. The top 5 assignees combined account for only 9.0% of all records, and the top 10 reach 12.3% — a fragmented landscape with a long tail of single- and few-filing entrants beyond the ranked leaders. This matters for competitive strategy: a new filer is more likely to encounter scattered prior art from many players than a concentrated blocking position from one or two.
Filing activity rose from 242 records in 2017 to a peak of 357 in 2022, then eased to 269 by 2024, a 24% decline over that three-year span. Because patent publication typically lags filing by around 18 months, the 2025 and 2026 figures in any trend chart are still incomplete and should not be read as evidence that the field has stopped growing. The most defensible read is that disclosure volume has cooled from its 2022 peak, at least through the last complete filing year.
The largest concentration sits in B60T, vehicle brakes and braking, covering 38.1% of the 6,136 records in scope. B60W, hybrid and joint vehicle control, is second at 20.3%. Smaller but still meaningful shares appear in vehicle lighting and signalling, general vehicle accessories, traffic control systems, vehicle propulsion, railway traffic control and electric vehicle propulsion, each in the 4-6% range — since a single record can carry multiple IPC classes, these shares add up to more than 100%.
The classification data shows claim density concentrated in core braking and vehicle-control classes, while adjacent domains — railway traffic control, electric vehicle propulsion, and traffic control systems — carry comparatively thin AEB-specific activity at 4-6% of records each. That gap suggests combinations connecting AEB logic to those domains, such as rail-fleet or EV-specific braking triggers, are less densely claimed than core automotive braking hardware. Any concrete filing decision should still be checked against the specific claim language in that class, not just the aggregate share.
US10773647B2, assigned to Knorr-Bremse Systeme für Nutzfahrzeuge and published in 2020, claims a method for triggering automatic emergency braking that separates the driver warning step from the braking step. A warning is issued once a warning condition is met based on the vehicle's driving situation relative to an obstacle, and the automatic braking itself only engages after that warning has been given and a warning time period — itself a function of the driving situation — has elapsed. Anyone designing a variable-delay warning-then-brake sequence should read this claim closely, since it is representative of the sequencing logic contested across the field.
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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.