Bidirectional DC-DC Converter Safety and Compliance Patent Landscape 2026
- Filing has already peaked. 2021 was the high point at 36 families; by the 2022 midpoint activity had eased to 23, and the trend since reads flat to declining rather than growing.
- One IPC subclass carries almost the entire corpus. 339 of 340 records sit in H02M power conversion, with H02J grid-supply and B60L EV propulsion as the only subclasses with meaningful secondary presence.
- Co-filing is rare and thin. Only 10 co-assignee pairs exist across 340 families, and the strongest of them share just 4 records — this is a field of solo filers, not alliances.
Filing growth compares 2021 (36 records) with 2024 (25) — 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 340 records in scope (CR5), not by the ranked leaders only.
What this landscape covers
This dataset tracks patent families at the intersection of bidirectional DC-DC conversion and the compliance vocabulary that separates a lab prototype from a certifiable product: galvanic isolation, creepage clearance, functional safety and safety compliance. It is not a general converter-topology search — the claim-description filter means every record in it explicitly engages with an isolation or safety concept, not just switching behaviour.
Coverage runs from 2015 through the 2026 data cut-off. Because publication typically lags filing by around 18 months, the 2025 and 2026 counts in any trend view are undercounts of what has actually been filed — treat the most recent one or two years as a floor, not a ceiling.
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Filing trend and technology composition
340 published records, all captured as distinct patent families, spread unevenly across geography, IPC subclass and time.
A field that has stopped growing
Filings rose from 13 in 2017 to a peak of 36 in 2021, then eased — 23 at the 2022 midpoint and lower still since. Read against the 18-month publication lag, the most recent years understate true filing activity, but even generously adjusted the curve is flattening rather than accelerating.
H02M dominates; everything else is peripheral
339 of 340 records classify under H02M (power conversion), confirming the search is anchored correctly. H02J (77, grid/supply systems) and B60L (38, EV propulsion) are the only subclasses with real secondary weight; H01F, G05F, H01M, H05B and H03B each sit in single digits to low teens, marking them as adjacent but thin.
Shares are the percentage of the 340 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
Go deeper on Bidirectional DC-DC Converter Safety and Compliance with Eureka
This page is one run against one query. Ask Eureka your own question about bidirectional dc-dc converter safety and compliance and every answer comes back with the patent numbers behind it.
Try EurekaMost-cited prior art and a recent representative filing
US20240291387A1 — DC-DC converter with galvanic isolation and corresponding method of control
A DC-DC converter with galvanic isolation built around a resonant oscillator coupled to a transformer primary winding, with a rectifier on the secondary side producing the output voltage. A regulation loop compares output voltage to a reference and adjusts the current in the resonant oscillator accordingly, with the oscillator tuned toward a sub-resonant or sub-harmonic operating point.Filed by STMICROELECTRONICS S.R.L., published 2024-08-29.
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | US20040125618A1 | Multiple energy-source power converter system | 424 |
| 2 | US20030142513A1 | Factorized power architecture with point of load sine amplitude converters | 246 |
| 3 | US20080192509A1 | DC-DC converter with isolation | 179 |
| 4 | US20120042588A1 | Integrated photovoltaic module | 149 |
| 5 | US20070171680A1 | Methods and apparatus for a resonant converter | 145 |
| 6 | US20120268969A1 | DC-ac inverter with high frequency isolation transformer | 141 |
| 7 | US7889519B2 | Methods and apparatus for a resonant converter | 101 |
| 8 | US9893633B1 | Modular multilevel DC-DC converter and associated method of use | 82 |
| 9 | US6151222A | Dual voltage automotive electrical system with sub-resonant DC-DC converter | 76 |
| 10 | US20150162840A1 | DC-DC converter circuit using an LLC circuit in the region of voltage gain above unity | 55 |
Citation counts are cumulative and favour older filings — they signal historical influence on this claim space, not 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 numbers mean for a filing decision
Four patterns stand out once the raw counts are read against each other.
Growth has already crested
The peak year, 2021, is behind this field, not ahead of it. A midpoint count of 23 against a peak of 36 means the curve turned down before the recent-year publication lag can explain it — this is a maturing filing wave, not an emerging one.
Almost everything sits in one subclass
With H02J and B60L as the only subclasses carrying real secondary volume, the safety and isolation vocabulary in this search has been claimed almost entirely inside core power-conversion classifications rather than spilling into adjacent battery, heating or oscillator subclasses.
Influence sits with older multi-source architectures
The most-cited records date to the 2003–2008 window and cover multi-source power conversion and resonant topologies generally, not isolation-specific safety claims. That gap between citation weight and the search's actual focus is worth noting when assessing freedom to operate.
Solo filing is the norm
Only 10 co-assignee pairs appear across the whole corpus, and the strongest pairings share just 4 records each. Filers in this space are overwhelmingly working alone rather than through joint ventures or co-development agreements.
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to bidirectional dc-dc converter safety and compliance, with the prior art for and against each one.
| Assignee | Co-assignee | Shared families |
|---|---|---|
| Eltek AS | MYHRE ROAR | 4 |
| Eltek AS | BOYSEN KJETIL | 4 |
| Huawei Digital Power Technologies Co., Ltd. | FACANHA DE OLIVEIRA EDUARDO | 2 |
| Technical University of Denmark (DTU) | NYMAND MORTEN | 1 |
| Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd. | ZHANG YANZHONG | 1 |
| Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd. | TSENGENES GEORGIOS | 1 |
| Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd. | TORRICO BASCOPE GROVER | 1 |
| Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd. | RUIZ GOMEZ FERNANDO | 1 |
With just 10 co-assignee pairs across 340 families, most applicants — including the largest ones — file independently in this claim space.
Who holds the ground, and where it has gone quiet
Recent-year momentum has stalled even among established names in this dataset, which puts a premium on identifying where new claim space still sits open.
US leads by volume, Europe and India follow
The United States accounts for 150 of the tracked filings, well ahead of Europe (EPO) at 72 and India at 49. WIPO/PCT filings (25) and the United Kingdom (17) and Canada (8) trail, suggesting most applicants are not yet pursuing broad multi-region protection for this specific isolation/safety claim set.
Named leaders show zero recent-year filings
Every assignee tracked for recent-year momentum — including large incumbents — shows zero filings in the latest year. Given the 18-month publication lag this partly reflects reporting delay, but it also means no single player is visibly accelerating right now.
Joint filings are shallow even at the top
The strongest co-assignee relationships in the dataset share only 4 records. There is no dense collaboration cluster here — partnerships exist but stay small and bilateral rather than forming a hub.
| Assignee | Recent year | YoY |
|---|---|---|
| Technical University of Denmark (DTU) | 0 | — |
| Eltek AS | 0 | — |
| General Electric Company, UK | 0 | — |
| STMicroelectronics S.r.l. (Italy) | 0 | — |
| Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd. | 0 | — |
| Apple Inc. | 0 | — |
| VLT, Inc. | 0 | — |
| Schneider Electric IT Corporation | 0 | — |
Where to take this
The landscape points to a field with occupied core claims and thin, specific gaps at the edges.
Map the H02J and B60L overlap
Grid-supply and EV-propulsion filings are the only subclasses with real secondary volume — worth a dedicated pass to see whether isolation claims there differ meaningfully from core H02M language.
Explore adjacent IPC classesStress-test freedom to operate against older art
The highest-citation records predate the safety/isolation framing and cover broader converter architectures. Confirm whether their claims actually reach current isolation-specific designs before assuming clearance.
Run a citation-aware FTO checkWatch for the lag-adjusted 2025–2026 catch-up
Recent-year momentum reads as zero across named leaders, partly an artefact of publication lag. Re-pull this trend in six to twelve months to see whether the apparent slowdown holds.
Re-run the trend laterCommon questions on this landscape
A record qualifies only if it combines bidirectional or general DC-DC converter terminology in the title/abstract with safety-specific vocabulary — galvanic isolation, creepage clearance, functional safety or safety compliance — in the claims or description. This means the dataset excludes converters that mention safety only in passing, and it excludes pure topology patents that never engage isolation or compliance language. The IPC filter (H02M3/335, H02M1/00, H01F27/32) further anchors the set to power-conversion and transformer-related classifications.
No, filing activity has already passed its peak. The high point was 2021 at 36 families, and by the 2022 midpoint activity had fallen to 23, with lower counts in the years since. Even after accounting for the roughly 18-month lag between filing and publication, which understates the last one to two years, the overall shape reads as flat to declining rather than an emerging growth curve.
The dataset's recent-year momentum tracking shows every named assignee — including established incumbents — recording zero filings in the most recent tracked year. That does not mean these companies have exited the space; it more likely reflects the publication lag combined with a genuinely mature, lower-volume filing period. Ranking by cumulative family count (rendered separately in the assignee table) is the more reliable way to judge historical leadership than recent-year counts alone.
The clearest gaps sit in IPC subclasses carrying only single-digit to low-teen record counts — H01F (inductors/transformers), G05F (variable control), H01M (batteries/fuel cells), H05B (heating circuits) and H03B (oscillators) — compared to 339 records concentrated in H02M. Specific under-claimed combinations include oscillator-tuned isolation transformers, creepage-clearance winding geometry, and functional-safety loop control applied to EV propulsion links. These are narrower filing opportunities rather than wide-open fields, since the core converter topology claims are already dense.
Citation counts in a bounded corpus like this one systematically favour older records, since they have had more years to accumulate references regardless of current relevance. The top-cited record here, US20040125618A1 at 424 citations, dates to a multi-source power converter architecture from 2004 — influential on the field broadly, but not necessarily the tightest read on today's isolation-specific safety claims. Use citation rank as a signal of historical influence, and pair it with recency and IPC-specificity before drawing freedom-to-operate conclusions.
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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.