AMI Cybersecurity Patents: Who Leads, Where the Gaps Are 2026
- Filing has cooled since its 2019 peak of 258. 2026 is tracking at 29 (partial year), with the 2022 midpoint already below peak — this is a maturing claim space, not a growing one.
- Digital transmission and data processing dominate the IPC mix. H04L and G06F together account for more than 2,280 of the 3,045 records, meaning most claims sit on communication and processing architecture rather than metering hardware.
- Recent-year momentum is negative across the assignees tracked. Every named assignee in the latest-year momentum data shows a decline or a flat zero, consistent with a field where core positions were staked out earlier.
Filing growth compares 2021 (184 records) with 2024 (132) — 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 3,045 records in scope (CR5), not by the ranked leaders only.
What this landscape covers
Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI) cybersecurity sits at the intersection of grid operations and network security: it covers how smart meters authenticate, encrypt, detect tampering and report back through a home area network or wide-area communication link. The search underlying this page combines AMI and smart-meter terminology with cybersecurity terms — meter cybersecurity, secure communication and tamper detection — across 3,045 published patent families filed between 2015 and mid-2026.
Filing activity peaked in 2019 and has trended down since, with the most recent year understated because publication typically lags filing by around 18 months. The technology composition skews heavily toward digital transmission (H04L) and general data processing (G06F), with wireless networking (H04W) and grid power systems (H02J) as secondary clusters — a pattern that says more about where claims are concentrated than about where the unresolved engineering problems actually are.
Filing trend and technology composition
Two views of the same 3,045-family corpus: filing activity by year, and where those filings sit across the IPC classification system.
A peak-and-decline filing curve
Filings rose from 172 in 2017 to a peak of 258 in 2019, held near that level through the 2022 midpoint of 208, then declined toward 29 in 2026 (a partial year). Read the tail end cautiously: publication lag means 2025 and 2026 filings are still arriving.
Communication and processing lead, metering hardware trails
H04L (1,478) and G06F (802) together cover roughly three-quarters of the corpus alongside H04W (727), pointing to claims built around transmission protocols, data handling and wireless networking rather than the physical meter. H02J, G06Q, G01D, G05B and G01R form a smaller tail covering grid integration, billing logic, measurement and control.
Shares are the percentage of the 3,045 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
Go deeper on Advanced Metering Infrastructure Cybersecurity with Eureka
This page is one run against one query. Ask Eureka your own question about advanced metering infrastructure cybersecurity and every answer comes back with the patent numbers behind it.
Try EurekaA representative filing and the most-cited prior art
US9106631B2 — Smart meter trust center switch (Honeywell International Inc., 2015-08-11)
An apparatus includes a smart meter trust center switch. The switch includes a computer processor that is configured to execute a subset of functions of a smart meter in a home area network (HAN). The computer processor is also configured to be coupled to and communicate with the smart meter and an advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) and advanced meter reading (AMR) network.Filed in the earlier part of this corpus's active period, this patent frames the trust-center switch as an intermediary that executes a subset of smart-meter functions on behalf of the HAN — a pattern that recurs across later filings in the secure-communication cluster.
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | US20160012465A1 | System and method for distributing, receiving, and using funds or credits and apparatus thereof | 2,555 |
| 2 | US20170006135A1 | Systems, methods, and devices for an enterprise internet-of-things application development platform | 1,900 |
| 3 | US7020701B1 | Method for collecting and processing data using internetworked wireless integrated network sensors (WINS) | 1,457 |
| 4 | US6735630B1 | Method for collecting data using compact internetworked wireless integrated network sensors (WINS) | 1,420 |
| 5 | US6859831B1 | Method and apparatus for internetworked wireless integrated network sensor (WINS) nodes | 1,175 |
| 6 | US20030093187A1 | PFN/TRAC systemTM FAA upgrades for accountable remote and robotics control to stop the unauthorized use of ai… | 977 |
| 7 | US20130152047A1 | System for distributed software quality improvement | 961 |
| 8 | US20080177678A1 | Method of communicating between a utility and its customer locations | 897 |
| 9 | US6832251B1 | Method and apparatus for distributed signal processing among internetworked wireless integrated network senso… | 668 |
| 10 | US20100148940A1 | Apparatus for internetworked wireless integrated network sensors (WINS) | 660 |
Citation counts favour older filings that have had more time to accumulate citations within the searched corpus; treat them as a measure of influence, not of current relevance.
Each row carries its publication number; clicking a row searches Eureka by that number.
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Four read-outs from the filing trend, IPC composition and citation data.
The claim space is settling, not expanding
Activity has fallen steadily since 2019, and the 2022 midpoint of 208 already sits well below peak. New entrants now face a corpus with a decade of prior art rather than an open field.
Security claims cluster on the network layer
H04L alone covers nearly half the corpus. Combined with G06F's 802 records, the bulk of claim activity addresses how meter data moves and is processed, not the metering sensor itself.
Foundational sensor-network patents still anchor the field
The most-cited records include early wireless integrated network sensor (WINS) patents from the early 2000s, showing how much of today's AMI security architecture traces back to general sensor-networking foundations rather than metering-specific origins.
Filing is concentrated in the US, with EPO and PCT as secondary routes
The United States receives roughly triple the filings of the next office (EPO, 460), with WIPO/PCT, India, Australia and Canada forming a smaller but still active secondary tier.
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to advanced metering infrastructure cybersecurity, with the prior art for and against each one.
Assignee activity and where the gaps sit
Recent-year momentum across tracked assignees is uniformly flat or negative, and co-assignment pairs are few — this looks like a field where positions were established early and are now being maintained rather than expanded.
No assignee is accelerating
Every assignee in the recent-year momentum data shows a decline or a flat zero in the latest year, including large diversified filers. This is consistent with the overall filing peak having passed in 2019.
Co-filing is rare and concentrated
Only ten co-assignee pairs appear in the corpus, and the strongest pair links a single corporate group's two entities rather than reflecting broad industry collaboration.
A long tail beneath the largest filers
The assignee ranking spans the full 3,045-family set, with activity distributed across telecom equipment makers, grid technology firms and single-filing entrants rather than sitting entirely with one dominant player.
| Assignee | Recent year | YoY |
|---|---|---|
| Qualcomm Incorporated | 2 | -33% |
| CAUSAM ENERGY INC | 1 | -88% |
| Pure Storage, Inc. | 1 | -86% |
| Itron, Inc. | 0 | — |
| Telefonaktiebolaget LM Ericsson | 0 | -100% |
| Google LLC | 0 | — |
| Nagravision S.A. | 0 | — |
| Toshiba Corporation | 0 | — |
Where to take this analysis
The dataset points to a field with declining new filing but a dense, unevenly distributed prior-art base. Two directions follow from that.
Map claim boundaries before drafting
With H04L and G06F this dense, a new secure-communication or tamper-detection filing needs a clause-level design-around check against the most-cited records, not just a keyword search.
Explore claims in Eureka →Track the under-claimed branches
Meter-side tamper enclosures and mesh-network authentication show up thinly in this corpus relative to the network-layer cluster — worth monitoring for new entrants before the space fills in.
Set up monitoring in Eureka →Common questions about AMI cybersecurity patents
In this dataset, it means a published patent family whose title, abstract or claims combine AMI, smart-meter or advanced-meter-reading terminology with cybersecurity concepts such as secure communication, meter cybersecurity or tamper detection. That spans a wide range of technical implementations, from trust-center switches that mediate home-area-network traffic to encryption schemes for meter-to-utility reporting. It does not include patents on metering hardware or billing logic alone unless a security element is explicitly claimed.
The recent-year momentum data shows activity from telecom-equipment and technology firms alongside dedicated energy and grid companies, but none of them is currently accelerating filing — every tracked assignee shows a flat or negative year-over-year change in the latest year. This suggests the field's largest players established their core positions earlier in the 2017-2022 window rather than in the last one or two years. A full assignee ranking across the 3,045-family corpus shows a long tail of smaller and single-filing entrants beneath the more active names.
Filing rose from 172 in 2017 to a peak of 258 in 2019, then fell through a 2022 midpoint of 208 down toward 29 in 2026. This pattern is typical of a technology area where foundational claim space — communication protocols, authentication schemes, tamper-detection methods — was staked out early, leaving later filers to compete over narrower incremental improvements. Note that the most recent one to two years in any filing trend are understated because publication typically lags the original filing date by around 18 months, so the true 2025-2026 numbers will rise somewhat as more applications publish.
H04L (digital information transmission) is the largest single subclass at 1,478 records, followed by G06F (electric digital data processing) at 802 and H04W (wireless communication networks) at 727. Together these three account for the majority of the corpus, showing that most claimed inventions address how meter data is transmitted, secured and processed rather than the physical metering sensor. Secondary clusters in H02J (grid power systems), G06Q (billing and administrative processing), G01D and G01R (measurement) and G05B (control systems) cover the remaining, smaller share.
Relative to the dense H04L and G06F clusters, sub-areas like meter-side physical tamper-evident enclosures, key rotation schemes for HAN devices, cross-utility tamper-event correlation and firmware attestation at the meter gateway carry noticeably fewer records in this corpus. That does not guarantee freedom to operate — a proper clearance search is still required — but it does indicate these branches have not been claimed as heavily as the core communication-layer inventions. Given the overall decline in filing since 2019, these adjacent branches are worth checking before the space fills in further.
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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.