Bone Conduction Patents: Who Leads, Where the Gaps Are 2026
- 54.0% concentration. The top 5 of 31 ranked assignees account for 27 of the 50 records in scope — filing here is concentrated rather than fragmented.
- Flat, not falling, momentum. Filing held steady from 2021 to 2024 (2 to 2 records, 0% change) after peaking at 4 in 2020 — publication lag means 2025 onward is still filling in.
- H04R dominates, everything else is thin. 76.0% of records sit in H04R (loudspeakers & audio transducers) while adjacent classes like A61F, G02C and G09B each cover only 10.0% or less.
Filing growth compares 2021 (2 records) with 2024 (2) — 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 50 records in scope (CR5), not by the ranked leaders only.
What the patent record shows
Bone conduction and alternative audio transducer patents span a narrow technical corridor: getting sound into the skull or an alternative pathway without occluding the ear canal, while managing vibration transmission efficiency, sound leakage, contact pressure and power efficiency. The 50 records in scope run from 2015 through the current data cut-off, covering wearables, hearing assistance, hard-hat and helmet audio, and underwater or occupational communication devices.
Filing is not evenly spread. A small group of assignees accounts for a majority of the record set, most of the technical activity sits inside a single IPC subclass, and the growth curve is flat rather than rising over the most recent complete years — a pattern worth reading carefully before deciding where to file next.
Filing trends and technology composition
These figures use the same denominators shown on the page: shares of IPC classes are measured against all 50 records in scope, and a record can carry more than one class.
Filing trend: steady, not accelerating
Filings rose from zero in 2017 to a peak of 4 in 2020, then settled into a flat pattern: 2 records in 2021 and 2 in 2024, a 0% change over that three-year span. 2025 and 2026 figures will revise upward as publication catches up with filing, so treat the tail of the chart as incomplete rather than as a decline.
Technology composition: transducer engineering dominates
H04R (loudspeakers & audio transducers) covers 76.0% of the 50 records, confirming that most of the inventive activity is core transducer mechanics rather than the application layer. A61F, G02C, G06F and H04B each sit at 10.0%, and A61H, G09B and A61B trail further behind — these smaller classes mark where bone conduction intersects prosthetics, eyewear, computing and physical therapy, but none of them has built up dense coverage yet.
Shares are the percentage of the 50 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
Go deeper on Bone Conduction and Alternative Transducers with Eureka
This page is one run against one query. Ask Eureka your own question about bone conduction and alternative transducers and every answer comes back with the patent numbers behind it.
Try EurekaMost-cited prior art and a representative filing
US8761416B2 — Bone conduction transducer with improved high frequency response
A bone conduction transducer comprising a first seismic mass and a second mass connected to each other by a first spring suspension, where the first mass and spring suspension create a first mechanical resonance in the low frequency range, and a second mechanical resonance is created in the high frequency range by interaction between the second mass and a second spring compliance introduced between the second mass and the skull.Filed by Osseofon AB, granted 2014-06-24. The dual-mass, dual-resonance architecture is the mechanical baseline against which later high-frequency-response claims in this field are typically compared.
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | US20130051585A1 | Apparatus and Method for Audio Delivery With Different Sound Conduction Transducers | 223 |
| 2 | US20130169513A1 | Wearable computing device | 174 |
| 3 | US20100223706A1 | Welding helmet audio communication systems and methods with bone conduction transducers | 108 |
| 4 | US5889730A | Underwater audio communication system using bone conducted sound | 94 |
| 5 | US20120083860A1 | Bone conduction transducer with improved high frequency response | 60 |
| 6 | US9020168B2 | Apparatus and method for audio delivery with different sound conduction transducers | 44 |
| 7 | EP0951883A2 | Wearable communication device with bone conduction transducer | 42 |
| 8 | US7869610B2 | Balanced armature bone conduction shaker | 30 |
| 9 | US20220322017A1 | Bone conduction audio apparatus and bone conduction audio apparatus controlling method | 28 |
| 10 | WO2010110713A1 | Bone conduction transducer with improved high frequency response | 20 |
Citation counts inside a searched corpus favour older filings, since they have had more time to accumulate citations — read this as a signal of influence on later work, not as a ranking of current commercial importance.
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Browse MCP servers →What the numbers mean for a filing decision
Three patterns stand out once the ranking, the trend and the IPC composition are read together.
The field has a defined leadership tier
The top 5 of 31 ranked assignees hold 27 of the 50 records in scope, a 54.0% share, and the top 10 extend that to 78.0%. That leaves a long tail of single- or double-filing entrants competing for the remaining fraction of the record set.
Activity has plateaued since the 2020 peak
Filings peaked at 4 in 2020 and have not returned to that level; the 2021-to-2024 window shows no net growth. This is a mature-but-not-shrinking picture — recent years are still incomplete due to publication lag, so no downward trend should be read into 2025 or 2026 yet.
Coverage is deep in one class and thin elsewhere
Three-quarters of records touch H04R, the core transducer class, while application-adjacent classes — implants, eyewear, computing, telephony, physical therapy — each sit at 10.0% or below. That gap is where new combinations of bone conduction with a specific application domain remain lightly claimed.
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to bone conduction and alternative transducers, with the prior art for and against each one.
Who is filing, and where the gaps sit
The ranked assignee list — 31 companies drawn from the 50 records in scope — shows a small leadership group ahead of a long tail, and recent-year momentum data shows even the named leaders have gone quiet on new filings.
One filer sits well ahead of the field
The top-ranked assignee holds 10 of the 50 records in scope, roughly double the fifth-place count of 3, indicating a single company built an early and sustained position in transducer mechanics rather than the field converging on a shared standard.
The middle of the ranking is thinly spread
By fifth place the count has already dropped to 3 records, and by tenth place to 2 — the drop-off from leader to mid-field is steep, meaning most companies with a presence here hold only a handful of filings each.
A small inventor network recurs across filings
Ten co-assignee pairs appear in the data, with three pairings each recurring three times among the same group of named inventors — a sign of a compact team or lab whose work has been assigned across related filings rather than a broad industry collaboration.
| Assignee | Recent year | YoY |
|---|---|---|
| Osseofon AB | 0 | — |
| Knowles Electronics LLC | 0 | — |
| Illinois Tool Works Inc | 0 | — |
| Google LLC | 0 | — |
| Shenzhen Magnet Tech Co Ltd | 0 | — |
| Nippon Telegraph & Telephone Corp | 0 | — |
| XIE PENG | 0 | — |
| WILLIAMS LANCE | 0 | — |
Where to take this from here
The dataset points to specific next steps depending on whether the goal is freedom-to-operate, competitive tracking, or identifying open claim space.
Check freedom-to-operate against the leader's portfolio
With one assignee holding 10 of 50 records, any new filing in core H04R transducer mechanics should be checked against that portfolio first, not just the most-cited prior art.
Run a freedom-to-operate check in EurekaTrack the flat-growth window for a shift
Filing has been flat from 2021 to 2024; watch whether 2025-2026 data, once publication catches up, shows renewed growth or confirms a plateau.
Set up monitoring in EurekaExplore the under-claimed application classes
A61F, G02C, G06F and H04B each sit at only 10.0% of records — combining bone conduction with these application domains is a lighter-claimed path than filing directly into H04R.
Explore white space in EurekaCommon questions about this landscape
One assignee leads the ranked list with 10 of the 50 records in scope, noticeably ahead of the fifth-ranked company at 3 records. The top 5 assignees together account for 54.0% of all records, and the top 10 account for 78.0%, which means the field has a clear leadership tier followed by a long tail of companies with only one or two filings each. Anyone doing freedom-to-operate work should check the leader's portfolio specifically rather than assuming the field is evenly distributed.
Filings peaked at 4 records in 2020 and have since held flat, with 2021 and 2024 both showing 2 records — a 0% change over that span. Because patent publication typically lags filing by around 18 months, the 2025 and 2026 figures in this dataset are still incomplete and should not be read as a decline. The honest read is a plateau since 2020 rather than clear growth or a clear drop.
H04R, the loudspeakers and audio transducers class, covers 76.0% of the 50 records in scope and is by far the dominant classification. Smaller clusters appear in A61F (implants and prostheses), G02C (spectacles and lenses), G06F (data processing) and H04B (transmission), each at 10.0% of records, with A61H, G09B and A61B trailing further behind. Because a single record can carry multiple IPC codes, these shares add up to more than 100%.
US8761416B2, assigned to Osseofon AB and granted 2014-06-24, claims a bone conduction transducer built around two seismic masses connected by a first spring suspension, engineered so a first mechanical resonance forms in the low-frequency range and a second mechanical resonance forms in the high-frequency range through a second spring compliance introduced between the second mass and the skull. This dual-mass, dual-resonance mechanical structure is a foundational approach to widening the frequency response of skull-coupled transducers. Later filings addressing high-frequency response in bone conduction devices are commonly benchmarked against this architecture.
The clearest gaps sit outside the dominant H04R cluster, in classes that each cover only 10.0% or less of the 50 records: A61F (prosthetic integration), G02C (eyewear-mounted transducers), A61H (physical therapy coupling), G09B (educational or demonstration aids), and A61B (diagnostic applications). These combinations of bone conduction with a specific application domain are lightly claimed compared to core transducer mechanics, making them a more open starting point for new filings than H04R itself.
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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.