Baby Monitors & Sleep Sensing Patents: Who Leads, Gaps 2026
- Concentrated at the top. The top 5 assignees hold 186 of 270 records in scope (68.9%), and the top 10 hold 225 (83.3%) — a small group has staked out most of the claim space.
- Filing has cooled from its peak. 2018 was the high point at 53 records; from 2021 to 2024, the last complete filing years, volume fell from 24 to 12, a 50% drop.
- Contactless sensing dominates the claims. H04L (digital transmission) touches 40.4% of records and A61B (diagnosis) 27.0%, showing the field is built as a wireless-sensing problem as much as a medical one.
Filing growth compares 2021 (24 records) with 2024 (12) — 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 270 records in scope (CR5), not by the ranked leaders only.
What this patent set covers
This landscape covers 270 published records filed between 2015 and mid-2026 that combine baby monitor or infant sleep/breathing monitoring claims with a second layer of technical constraint: contactless sensing, false alarm rate, video privacy, wireless range, battery operation or medical claim boundary language. That second layer matters — it separates monitors that merely stream video from devices making an actual physiological measurement claim, which is where the harder engineering and the harder prior art both sit.
Because publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, the last two years in any trend chart will always look thinner than they eventually turn out to be. Treat 2024 as the most recent year with a complete picture, and read 2025-2026 as filling in rather than as a genuine decline.
Filing trend and technology composition
Two views of the same 270 records: how filing volume has moved year over year, and which IPC subclasses the claims actually sit in.
A 2018 peak followed by a real pullback
Filings rose from 17 in 2017 to a peak of 53 in 2018, then eased. Comparing the two most recent complete years, 2021 (24 records) to 2024 (12 records) shows a 50% decline — a genuine cooling of the field rather than a data artefact, since both years are past the publication lag window.
Wireless transmission and diagnosis claims lead
H04L (digital information transmission) appears in 40.4% of the 270 records and A61B (diagnosis & surgery) in 27.0%, with G01S (radar/positioning, 23.0%) and H04W (wireless networks, 22.6%) close behind. Video-specific H04N sits lower at 12.6% and alarm-signalling G08B at 11.9%, suggesting the sensing and transport layers draw more claim activity than the alarm-logic layer itself.
Shares are the percentage of the 270 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
Go deeper on Baby Monitors and Sleep Sensing with Eureka
This page is one run against one query. Ask Eureka your own question about baby monitors and sleep sensing and every answer comes back with the patent numbers behind it.
Try EurekaRepresentative filing and most-cited prior art
US20160345832A1 — System and method for monitoring biological status through contactless sensing
A system and method for monitoring biological status through contactless sensing that includes a sensing device with at least one video imaging device; a sensor data processing unit, wherein the sensor processing unit when in a respiratory sensing mode is configured to extract a set of primary components of motion from image data from the video imaging device; a biological signal processor that when in a respiratory sensing mode is configured to identify at least one dominant component of motion and generate a respiratory signal; and a monitor system.Filed by Wearless Tech Inc, published 2016-12-01. Its claim scope centres on extracting a respiratory signal from motion components in video image data — a construction that anyone building camera-based, non-contact breathing detection needs to design around or license.
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | US6790178B1 | Physiological monitor and associated computation, display and communication unit | 2,234 |
| 2 | US20140207282A1 | Mobile Robot Providing Environmental Mapping for Household Environmental Control | 780 |
| 3 | US9113051B1 | Power outlet cameras | 389 |
| 4 | US9058738B1 | Doorbell communication systems and methods | 348 |
| 5 | US9060104B2 | Doorbell communication systems and methods | 324 |
| 6 | US20160105644A1 | Cameras and networked security systems and methods | 322 |
| 7 | US9237318B2 | Doorbell communication systems and methods | 307 |
| 8 | US9094584B2 | Doorbell communication systems and methods | 298 |
| 9 | EP3739356A1 | Method, apparatus, and system for wireless tracking, scanning and monitoring | 293 |
| 10 | US20200064444A1 | Method, apparatus, and system for human identification based on human radio biometric information | 290 |
Citation counts reflect age as much as importance — older utility patents accumulate citations simply by having been in force longer, so treat this table as a map of influential prior art rather than a ranking of current relevance.
Each row carries its publication number; clicking a row searches Eureka by that number.
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Three patterns stand out once you look past the raw count of 270 records.
A small group has staked most of the claim space
186 of the 270 records in scope belong to five assignees, and the top 10 combined account for 225 (83.3%). That leaves a genuine long tail of single- or few-filing entrants working the remaining claim space — worth checking individually before assuming an area is clear.
Volume has cooled from its 2018 peak
After peaking at 53 records in 2018, filing volume fell from 24 in 2021 to 12 in 2024 — the last two years that can be read as complete once the publication lag is accounted for. That is a real pullback, not a data gap, and it suggests the core sensing approaches have already been claimed by the leaders.
This is a transmission and sensing problem, not just a camera problem
H04L (40.4%) and G01S (23.0%) outweigh H04N video claims (12.6%), meaning the harder-fought claim territory is in how signals are sensed and transmitted rather than in video capture itself. Filers focused only on the camera layer are competing in the thinner part of the field.
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to baby monitors and sleep sensing, with the prior art for and against each one.
Who holds the ground, and where the gate sits
The ranked leaders are large platform and device companies plus several sensing-specialist filers; momentum among the biggest names has flattened in the latest tracked year, consistent with the broader slowdown.
One filer sits well clear of the field
The leading assignee holds 80 records against a fifth-place figure of 20 and a tenth-place figure of 6 — a steep drop-off that marks this as a winner-heavy field rather than an evenly spread one.
A tight cluster of co-assignees files together repeatedly
Ten co-assignee pairs appear in the data, with the strongest pairings sharing 22 records each — evidence of a small research or inventor group whose filings cut across contactless sensing and signal-processing claims together.
Momentum has gone flat at the top
Several of the largest filers, including the top-ranked assignee, show zero filings in the latest tracked year with year-over-year drops of -100%. Read this alongside the publication lag: it likely reflects filings still working through to publication rather than an abrupt exit from the field.
| Assignee | Recent year | YoY |
|---|---|---|
| Google LLC | 0 | -100% |
| Origin Wireless Inc | 0 | — |
| iRobot Corp | 0 | -100% |
| WU CHENSHU | 0 | — |
| WANG BEIBEI | 0 | — |
| LIU K J RAY | 0 | — |
| AU OSCAR CHI LIM | 0 | — |
| SKYBELL TECHNOLOGIES INC | 0 | — |
Where to take this from here
The data points to specific next steps depending on whether you are clearing a design or scouting a filing.
Check the long tail, not just the leaders
With 83.3% of records held by the top 10, the remaining sixteen-plus points of share sit with single- or few-filing entrants whose claims are easy to overlook in a quick scan but can still block a specific implementation.
Run a freedom-to-operate check in EurekaWatch the gap between filing and publication
The apparent drop to zero for several leading assignees in the latest year is consistent with an 18-month publication lag rather than a real exit — worth re-checking this landscape again once 2025-2026 filings finish publishing.
Set a monitoring alert in EurekaLook past the video layer
H04L and G01S claim density outweighs H04N, so a scouting exercise that only searches for camera-based baby monitor patents will miss most of the contested claim space.
Explore the full IPC breakdown in EurekaCommon questions on baby monitor and sleep sensing patents
The field is concentrated: the top five assignees hold 186 of the 270 records in scope, or 68.9%, and the top ten hold 225, or 83.3%. The leading assignee alone accounts for 80 records, well ahead of the fifth-place holder at 20 and the tenth-place holder at 6. That said, 67 companies appear in the ranking, so there is a genuine long tail of smaller filers working narrower claims outside the leading group.
Filing peaked in 2018 at 53 records and has cooled since. Comparing the two most recent complete years, 2021 to 2024, volume fell from 24 to 12 records, a 50% decline. Because publication typically lags filing by around 18 months, the years closest to the data cut-off will always look artificially thin, so this decline is measured on the last years that can fairly be called complete rather than on the very latest data.
Digital transmission claims (IPC class H04L) appear in 40.4% of the 270 records, followed by diagnosis and surgery claims (A61B) at 27.0%, radar and positioning (G01S) at 23.0%, and wireless networking (H04W) at 22.6%. Video-specific claims (H04N) sit lower at 12.6%, meaning the field is more heavily contested in how signals are sensed and transmitted wirelessly than in the camera hardware itself. A single record can carry several of these classes, so the figures naturally add to more than 100%.
US20160345832A1, filed by Wearless Tech Inc and published in December 2016, claims a system that extracts a respiratory signal from motion components found in video image data, using a contactless sensing device and a dedicated signal processor. It matters because it sits squarely on the camera-based, non-contact breathing detection approach that much of the later filing activity in this dataset builds on. Anyone building a similar video-derived respiratory monitoring feature should review its claim scope closely before finalising a design.
The densest claim territory is in wireless transmission (H04L) and diagnosis-adjacent sensing (A61B), so a filing that only touches video capture is entering a thinner, less contested part of the field. Sub-areas such as false-alarm-rate reduction algorithms, battery-operated contactless sensors, and privacy-preserving video processing show up in the dataset but at lower density than the core transmission and diagnosis classes, making them worth a closer freedom-to-operate look before assuming they are clear.
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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.