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Run your analysis now →https://www.patsnap.com/resources/blog/rd-blog/bone-conduction-and-hearing-devices-patent-landscape/ · Patsnap · data cut-off 2026-07-31 · downloaded from the live page
Patent Landscape · Audio TechnologyBone Conduction and Hearing Device Patents: Who Holds the Claim Space Now
- Filing has cooled since its 2022 peak. 123 families in 2022 against 90 in 2017 and a partial 7 in the most recent year, consistent with publication lag rather than a sudden drop in activity.
- H04R dominates almost completely. 2,794 of 2,797 records sit in the loudspeaker/transducer subclass, with G10L speech processing and A61F implants trailing far behind at 134 and 61 records.
- The strongest co-filing pair sits far above the rest. Oticon and Bernafon co-file together 23 times, nearly three times the next strongest pairs, pointing to a tight internal collaboration inside one ownership group.
2,797
Published Records
60%
Top-5 Share of All Records
-8%
3-Yr Growth (lag-adjusted)
US
Leading Jurisdiction
Published byPatsnap Research··7 min readSourced from Patsnap Eureka
Overview
What this landscape covers
This dataset tracks 2,797 published patent families filed between 2015 and mid-2026 at the intersection of bone conduction transducers and hearing aid electronics, filtered to claims touching vibration coupling, feedback cancellation, occlusion effect, power efficiency and fitting algorithms under IPC classes H04R25, H04R1 and A61F11. The search string deliberately pairs an audio-transducer mechanism with a claim-level technical problem, which is why the corpus concentrates so heavily in H04R rather than spreading evenly across the broader hearing-health field.
Because publication trails filing by roughly 18 months, the last one to two years in any trend chart will always look thinner than actual filing activity turns out to be. Read the 2022 peak as the most reliable recent signal and treat the 2025-2026 tail as provisional.
Filing activity, 2017-2026
Source: Patsnap Eureka. Assignee ranking and totals. Derived from a Patsnap search on Bone Conduction and Hearing Devices covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-07-31. Counts reflect published records only and shift as new filings publish.Run this in Eureka MCP
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The Numbers
Filing trend and technology composition
Two views of the same corpus: how filing volume has moved year over year, and how records distribute across the IPC subclasses that intersect this search.
A peak in 2022, then decline
Filings ran from 90 in 2017 to a peak of 123 in 2022, then declined toward a partial count of 7 in the most recent year. Because the 2022 midpoint already exceeds the endpoints on both sides, this reads as a flat-to-declining trend once the publication lag on recent years is accounted for, not a market in early growth.
H04R absorbs nearly the entire corpus
H04R (loudspeakers and audio transducers) appears in 2,794 of 2,797 records, effectively the entire dataset. G10L (speech and audio analysis), A61B (diagnosis and surgery) and A61F (implants and prostheses) each appear in a meaningful minority of records, showing where hearing-device claims cross into signal processing and surgical/implant territory, while H03G, H04B, G10K and G06F each register in the low tens of records as narrower cross-disciplinary slices.
Shares are the percentage of the 2,797 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
Source: Patsnap Eureka. Filing trend and technology composition. Derived from a Patsnap search on Bone Conduction and Hearing Devices covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-07-31. Counts reflect published records only and shift as new filings publish.
Go deeper on Bone Conduction and Hearing Devices with Eureka
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Try EurekaPrior Art
The patents setting the citation baseline
Representative filing
Feedback cancellation in a hearing aid with reduced sensitivity to low-frequency tonal inputs
GN RESOUND A/S
A feedback cancellation system with reduced sensitivity to low-frequency tonal inputs is provided. Such a system can be used, for example, in a hearing aid to prevent cancellation of the desired tonal inputs to the hearing aid, thus improving the gain at high frequencies of the hearing aid while simultaneously preserving the desired tonal inputs at low frequencies. The feedback cancellation system comprises a first adaptive filter block for adaptively filtering an error signal to remove the low-frequency tonal components from the error signal, constrained so that only low-frequency tones in the error signal are cancelled.Filed by GN ReSound, published 2003 — predates most of this corpus and defines the constrained adaptive-filter approach that later filings must design around.
Most-cited records in this corpus
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | US5606621A | Hybrid behind-the-ear and completely-in-canal hearing aid | 556 |
| 2 | US5201007A | Apparatus and method for conveying amplified sound to ear | 513 |
| 3 | US5987146A | Ear canal microphone | 483 |
| 4 | US6137889A | Direct tympanic membrane excitation via vibrationally conductive assembly | 447 |
| 5 | US5701348A | Articulated hearing device | 333 |
| 6 | US6359993B2 | Conformal tip for a hearing aid with integrated vent and retrieval cord | 298 |
| 7 | US7113611B2 | Disposable modular hearing aid | 275 |
| 8 | US20070053536A1 | Hearing aid system | 268 |
| 9 | US6072884A | Feedback cancellation apparatus and methods | 264 |
| 10 | US7403629B1 | Disposable modular hearing aid | 250 |
Citation counts reward age within a searched corpus; treat these as markers of foundational influence rather than current commercial relevance.
Each row carries its publication number; clicking a row searches Eureka by that number.
Source: Patsnap Eureka. Citation counts and representative records. Derived from a Patsnap search on Bone Conduction and Hearing Devices covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-07-31. Counts reflect published records only and shift as new filings publish.Run this in Eureka MCP
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What the data implies for a filing decision
Three read-throughs from the trend, the IPC spread and the citation base, framed around what they mean for where to file next rather than restating the figures.
Filing momentum
123 in 2022 → 7 latest year
families, peak vs most recent
Activity has cooled from its peak
The climb from 90 filings in 2017 to 123 in 2022 and the subsequent decline suggests the core mechanical and signal-processing approaches to bone conduction and hearing aids have largely been staked out. New entrants filing broad transducer or feedback-cancellation claims now compete against a dense, mature base rather than open ground.
Trend, 2017-2026
Subclass concentration
2,794 of 2,797 records
in H04R
Claim space is overwhelmingly mechanical/acoustic
With H04R capturing nearly the full corpus and only a few hundred records touching G10L, A61B or A61F, most competitive pressure sits in transducer design and coupling mechanics rather than in software-side signal processing, implant integration or diagnostics, which remain comparatively lightly filed.
IPC composition
Citation base age
556 citations
top-cited record
Foundational patents predate the current wave
The most-cited records in this corpus date to the 1990s and early 2000s, well before the 2017-2026 filing window tracked here. Their citation counts reflect decades of accumulated reference, not present-day relevance, and any freedom-to-operate check still has to start with them because their claim scope is what later filings had to design around.
Most-cited records
Collaboration pattern
23 co-filings
Oticon + Bernafon, strongest pair
Co-filing is concentrated, not distributed
Only ten co-assignee pairs appear in the dataset at all, and the strongest pair files together nearly three times more often than the next tier. Cross-company joint filing is rare in this field; most patent activity is organised inside single corporate groups rather than through external partnerships.
Co-assignee pairs
Eureka AI Agent
Looking for what nobody has claimed yet?
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to bone conduction and hearing devices, with the prior art for and against each one.
Source: Patsnap Eureka. Co-assignee relationships and derived observations. Derived from a Patsnap search on Bone Conduction and Hearing Devices covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-07-31. Counts reflect published records only and shift as new filings publish.Run this in Eureka MCP
Landscape
Who is filing, and where the gaps sit
Recent-year momentum figures show broad pull-back across the named assignees rather than one company pulling ahead, which changes how a newcomer should read the competitive field.
Momentum leader (by decline)
-96% YoY
Oticon, latest year
Even the most active filer has slowed sharply
Oticon still recorded 2 families in the latest year, more than most peers, but that is down 96% year-on-year. This is the clearest read available: activity is contracting across the board rather than concentrating with a single dominant filer.
Recent-year momentum
Zero-filing majority
0 in latest year
five of six tracked assignees
Most major assignees filed nothing in the latest year
Widex, Sivantos-lineage entities, Starkey, Nanoear and Bernafon all show zero filings in the latest tracked year, several down 100% year-on-year. Read this alongside the 18-month publication lag: some of this is real slowdown, some is simply not yet visible in the data.
Recent-year momentum
Internal consolidation
23 co-filings
Oticon + Bernafon
Ownership-group filing, not open collaboration
The strongest co-assignee link in the dataset sits between two entities under common ownership. Named-inventor pairs at Widex appear at a much lower frequency, suggesting most joint credit reflects internal group structure rather than cross-company technology sharing.
Co-assignee pairs
Recent-year filing momentum by assignee
| Assignee | Recent year | YoY |
|---|---|---|
| Oticon A/S | 2 | -96% |
| Widex A/S | 0 | -100% |
| GN Hearing A/S | 0 | — |
| Starkey Laboratories, Inc. | 0 | -100% |
| Nanoear Corporation | 0 | -100% |
| Bernafon AG | 0 | — |
| Oticon Medical A/S | 0 | -100% |
| Sonova Medical | 0 | — |
Source: Patsnap Eureka. Assignee-level momentum. Derived from a Patsnap search on Bone Conduction and Hearing Devices covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-07-31. Counts reflect published records only and shift as new filings publish.Run this in Eureka MCP
Next Steps
Where to take this analysis
The figures above describe the field as filed; turning them into a filing or freedom-to-operate decision means going deeper on specific claim sets and specific competitors.
Run a freedom-to-operate check against the top-cited records
The five most-cited patents in this corpus, several from the 1990s, still anchor claim scope in feedback cancellation and transducer coupling. Any new filing in those areas should be checked against them specifically, not just against recent art.
Explore prior art in EurekaTrack the assignees still filing after the 2022 peak
With most named assignees at zero filings in the latest year, isolating who is still active tells you more about where the field is heading than the aggregate trend does.
Monitor assignee activity in EurekaMap claim language in the under-claimed IPC branches
A61F, A61B and G06F overlaps remain thin relative to H04R. Drafting into these branches with a fitting-algorithm or implant-integration angle avoids the densest prior art.
Draft around white space in EurekaSource: Patsnap Eureka. Forward-looking reading of the same dataset. Derived from a Patsnap search on Bone Conduction and Hearing Devices covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-07-31. Counts reflect published records only and shift as new filings publish.Run this in Eureka MCP
FAQ
Common questions on this landscape
This dataset counts 2,797 published patent families filed between 2015 and mid-2026 under a search combining bone conduction and hearing aid terminology with claim-level concepts like feedback cancellation and vibration coupling, restricted to IPC classes H04R25, H04R1 and A61F11. The true figure for the field as a whole is larger, since any keyword and classification filter excludes some adjacent filings. Families, rather than raw publications, are the more reliable count because they remove duplicate counting across jurisdictions.
Based on this corpus, no: filings rose from 90 in 2017 to a peak of 123 in 2022, then declined toward a partial count of 7 in the most recent year. Because publication lags filing by around 18 months, the most recent one to two years will always understate true activity, but the 2022 peak already sitting above both the 2017 start and the current tail points to a maturing rather than expanding field. Treat any single-year spike or dip with that lag in mind.
The recent-year momentum data shows broad pull-back rather than one clear leader: Oticon recorded the highest recent-year count among named assignees, but even that was down 96% year-on-year, and most other tracked assignees, including Widex, Starkey and Bernafon, filed nothing in the latest year. This suggests the field's active filers are consolidating within existing patent estates rather than one company pulling ahead through new filing volume.
This GN ReSound filing, published in 2003, covers a feedback cancellation system for hearing aids that uses a constrained adaptive filter to strip low-frequency tonal components out of the error signal while leaving desired low-frequency tones intact. Its purpose is to let a hearing aid run higher gain at high frequencies without triggering feedback cancellation on wanted low-frequency input. Anyone drafting feedback-cancellation claims in this space should check their filter architecture against this constraint specifically, since it predates most of the corpus and defines an approach later filings had to work around.
The IPC composition shows H04R capturing nearly the entire corpus (2,794 of 2,797 records), while adjacent classes like A61F (implants), A61B (diagnostics) and G06F (digital processing) each register only tens of records. That imbalance points to under-claimed territory in implant-integrated bone conduction, diagnostic-linked fitting, and software-driven power-efficiency algorithms, areas that touch the core transducer technology without competing directly against the dense H04R prior art.
Answers are grounded in the same dataset. Derived from a Patsnap search on Bone Conduction and Hearing Devices covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-07-31. Counts reflect published records only and shift as new filings publish.Run this in Eureka MCP
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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.