Ankle foot orthosis and lower limb bracing patents: who holds the actuator claims, and what is still open
One filer, nine records. A single assignee accounts for 9 of the 12 records in scope, with the strongest co-assignee pairing built around a university research partnership. Filings peaked at 9 in 2017 and have tapered toward 0 in the most recent, partial year. With fewer than four complete years once publication lag is factored in, a growth rate cannot be stated reliably from this data.
- 1SUNCALL CORP9
- 2NAT UNIV KYOTO INST OF TECH9
- 3KYOTO UNIV9
- 4M ALAMELU2
- 5S KANAGARAJ2
See the full ankle foot orthoses and lower limb bracing analysis in Eureka
- The complete ranking, not just the top five
- Every IPC branch with its share of the corpus
- The most-cited records, and where claim space is still thin
Common questions about ankle foot orthosis patents
Who holds the most patents on ankle foot orthoses?
In this dataset, one corporate assignee holds 9 of the 12 records in scope, well ahead of any other filer. That assignee's filings are reinforced by co-assignee partnerships with two university research groups, which together form the field's citation core. The rest of the ranking drops quickly to entities holding just one or two records, several of them individual inventors rather than companies.
What does an actuator-equipped knee ankle foot orthosis patent actually claim?
The representative filing, US20200315899A1, claims a control method that calculates a thigh phase angle from a sensor reading, maps that angle to pre-stored assisting-force control data, and drives an actuator to deliver a matching assisting force to the lower-leg brace at the same sampling point. This is a sensor-to-actuator control loop claim, not a claim over ankle foot orthoses generally. Anyone designing a powered brace needs to check whether their control logic follows the same phase-angle-to-force mapping approach.
Is the ankle foot orthosis patent field growing or shrinking?
Filings peaked at 9 in 2017 and have tapered toward 0 in the most recent year, but that trend should be read cautiously. Publication typically lags filing by around 18 months, so the last one to two years in any dataset understate true activity. With fewer than four complete years available once that lag is accounted for, a reliable growth or decline rate cannot be stated from this evidence.
Disclaimer. This analysis is based on Patsnap Eureka data drawn from a limited snapshot of global patent records and is provided for general information and reference only. Patent data carries inherent limitations — recent filings are under-counted because of publication lag, counts may be on a record or family basis, classification and applicant-name data may contain errors or duplicates, and the underlying search query defines the scope shown — so the analysis may be incomplete or inaccurate and may not reflect the full technology landscape.
Nothing here is an exhaustive prior-art, novelty, freedom-to-operate or validity search, nor does it constitute legal, financial or professional advice, and it should not be relied upon as such. Verify independently and review with qualified patent and legal professionals before acting on it.
Method: Filing trend and technology composition. Derived from a Patsnap search on Ankle Foot Orthoses and Lower Limb Bracing covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-07-31. Counts reflect published records only and shift as new filings publish. Every share divides by all records in scope. Data: Patsnap Eureka. See the full landscape report.