Blind Spot Detection Patents: Leaders, Trends & White Space 2026
Filing growth compares 2021 (213 records) with 2024 (144) — 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 3,313 records in scope (CR5), not by the ranked leaders only.
What the blind spot detection patent record actually shows
Blind spot detection sits at the intersection of vehicle hardware, radar/camera sensing and driver-assistance control logic. Across 3,313 records filed or published between 2015 and mid-2026, the claim space splits unevenly: hardware and mirror-integration filings (B60R) outnumber pure sensing claims (G01S), which suggests much of the recent activity is about packaging detection into existing vehicle systems rather than inventing new sensing modalities. Publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, so figures for 2025 and 2026 will keep rising as more applications publish.
The assignee ranking is dominated by original equipment manufacturers and their tier-one suppliers, with the leader holding 146 families against a tenth-place company at 73 — a gap wide enough to show real concentration without a single monopoly. Below the ranked leaders, filing thins into a long tail of single- or few-filing entrants, which is where freedom-to-operate questions get harder to answer from ranking data alone.
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Filing trends and technology composition
Two views of the same 3,313-record dataset: how filing volume has moved year over year, and how records split across the IPC subclasses that define the technical approach.
Filing trend: a 2017 peak followed by a real pullback
Annual filings peaked at 252 in 2017 and have declined since; the 2021-to-2024 window alone shows a 32% drop (213 to 144 records), a comparison that uses only complete years. Years from 2025 onward will understate true activity because publication has not caught up with filing.
Technology composition: hardware and control classes lead
B60R (vehicle parts and accessories) covers 34.7% of records, ahead of G08G traffic control (26.8%), G01S radar/sonar/positioning (24.4%) and B60W hybrid/joint vehicle control (23.0%). Because a single record can carry multiple IPC classes, these shares are read against the full 3,313-record base and add to more than 100%, not against each other as a closed pie.
Shares are the percentage of the 3,313 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: Blind Spot Detection Patent Landscape with Eureka
This page is one run against one query. Ask Eureka your own question about advanced driver-assistance systems: blind spot detection patent landscape and every answer comes back with the patent numbers behind it.
Try EurekaThe most-cited prior art and a representative filing
US20130100287A1 — Blind Spot Detection System and Blind Spot Detection Method Thereof
A blind spot detection system and method for a transportation vehicle, using a plurality of detection modules to capture blind spot images when the vehicle moves below a predetermined speed or is stopped. A processing module performs image processing to detect and identify a moving object within those images, then a display module generates a mark pattern corresponding to the detected object.Filed by Altek Autotronics Corp, 2013-04-25 — a useful reference point for how early camera-based, low-speed blind spot claims were framed before radar-fusion approaches became common.
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | US5786772A | Vehicle blind spot detection display system | 1,150 |
| 2 | US5929786A | Vehicle blind spot detection display system | 885 |
| 3 | US6124886A | Modular rearview mirror assembly | 843 |
| 4 | US10315566B2 | Vehicle control device mounted on vehicle and method for controlling the vehicle | 839 |
| 5 | US6198409B1 | Vehicle rearview mirror display system | 827 |
| 6 | US7161616B1 | Image processing device and monitoring system | 655 |
| 7 | US5959367A | Vehicle mirror digital network and dynamically interactive mirror system | 629 |
| 8 | US20200294401A1 | A Method and Apparatus for Collecting and Using Sensor Data from a Vehicle | 615 |
| 9 | US6744353B2 | Blind spot detector | 611 |
| 10 | US6222460B1 | Interior rearview mirror system incorporating a supplemental inflatable restraint system status information d… | 602 |
Citation counts favour older records simply because they have had longer to accumulate citations inside the searched corpus — treat this table as a map of influential prior art, not a ranking of current technical importance.
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Browse MCP servers →What the numbers mean for filing strategy
Four read-outs from the dataset that matter more for deciding where to file than the raw counts alone.
The top of the field is dense but not closed
The five most active assignees together account for 18.3% of all records in scope, and the top ten reach 30.5%. That leaves roughly two-thirds of the field spread across the remaining 90 ranked companies and an unranked long tail — enough room for a well-targeted claim to avoid direct collision with the largest portfolios.
Volume has genuinely cooled since the 2017 peak
Filings fell from 213 in 2021 to 144 in 2024, a comparison built only on complete years. That is a real pullback in new filing activity, not a lag artifact — though it does not mean the underlying technology has stalled, only that the pace of new claims has slowed from its 2017 high.
Hardware integration outweighs pure sensing claims
B60R filings (vehicle parts and accessories) outnumber G01S radar/positioning filings (24.4%) and H04N pictorial-communication filings (8.5%). That gap suggests more competitive pressure is on how detection hardware integrates into mirrors, bumpers and body panels than on the sensing method itself.
Filing is US-led but genuinely multi-jurisdictional
The United States receives more filings than any other office, followed by Europe, South Korea, the WIPO PCT route, China and India. A strategy built only around US filing will miss meaningful activity moving through EPO and Korean offices in particular.
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to advanced driver-assistance systems: blind spot detection patent landscape, with the prior art for and against each one.
Where to take this analysis next
The dataset points to specific follow-up questions rather than a single conclusion — these are the ones worth running down before committing a filing budget.
Map the long tail below the ranked leaders
With the top 10 assignees holding only 30.5% of records, most of the field sits with companies outside the ranking. Understanding who those filers are and what they claim matters for freedom-to-operate work.
Explore assignee detail in EurekaSeparate hardware claims from sensing-method claims
B60R and G01S filings overlap but are not the same claim territory. Splitting a search by IPC subclass before drafting avoids filing directly on top of dense mirror-integration prior art.
Run a subclass-level search in EurekaTrack the 2025–2026 publication catch-up
Because publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, the apparent 2024 pullback needs revisiting once 2025 and 2026 filings finish publishing.
Set a monitoring alert in EurekaCommon questions about blind spot detection patents
The assignee ranking is led by a company holding 146 families, with the fifth-ranked assignee at 101 and the tenth-ranked at 73. Together the top 5 assignees account for 18.3% of all 3,313 records in scope, and the top 10 reach 30.5%. That leaves the majority of filings spread across a long tail of smaller filers, mostly automakers and their tier-one suppliers rather than a single dominant player.
Filing peaked in 2017 at 252 records and has declined since, with the most recent complete comparison — 2021 to 2024 — showing a 32% drop from 213 to 144 filings. Because publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, 2025 and 2026 figures are still incomplete and should not be read as confirming a continued slide. The honest read is that new filing activity cooled meaningfully after the 2017 peak, at least through 2024.
Vehicle hardware and accessory claims under IPC class B60R lead at 34.7% of the 3,313 records, ahead of traffic-control systems (G08G, 26.8%) and radar/sonar/positioning (G01S, 24.4%). Vehicle control classes (B60W) and lighting/signalling (B60Q) also carry meaningful shares. Because a record can sit in multiple classes, these figures describe overlapping claim territory rather than a strict breakdown, and they signal where hardware integration competes hardest with pure sensing method claims.
The United States receives the largest volume at 1,303 filings, followed by the European Patent Office at 406, South Korea at 373, the WIPO PCT route at 222, China at 213 and India at 165. This spread shows the technology is filed across major automotive markets rather than concentrated in one jurisdiction, so a freedom-to-operate review limited to a single office will miss substantial activity elsewhere.
US20130100287A1, filed by Altek Autotronics Corp in 2013, claims a camera-based system that captures blind spot images at low speed or standstill, processes them to detect a moving object, and displays a mark pattern for the driver. It is a useful reference point for how early image-based detection claims were structured, but it sits within a much larger citation network — several older records in this dataset are cited far more heavily. New entrants should treat it as one data point in a crowded low-speed camera-detection sub-area, not as the defining prior art for 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.