Bone Conduction Transducer Patents: Who Leads, Where Gaps Are 2026
- 58.4% of all 303 records sit with just five assignees — coupling and retention-force claim space is concentrated, not fragmented.
- Filing peaked in 2021 at 34 and fell 26% to 25 by 2024, the last year the data can be read as complete.
- H04R covers 77.2% of records but implant, electrotherapy and spectacle-frame classes each carry a meaningful minority share, pointing to coupling mechanics reused across adjacent hardware.
Filing growth compares 2021 (34 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 303 records in scope (CR5), not by the ranked leaders only.
What this landscape covers
Bone conduction transducer coupling sits at the mechanical and magnetic interface between a hearing device’s drive unit and the wearer’s skull: how the transducer is held against the skin or abutment, how much retention force and output force it delivers, and how much of the signal is lost to skin attenuation or fed back as an unwanted feedback path. Claims in this dataset range from percutaneous abutment osseointegration to magnetic and adhesive skin-contact designs, and from single-sided deafness aids to bone-anchored implants. The search spans 2015 through the 2026 data cut-off and returns 303 published records.
Because publication trails filing by roughly 18 months, the 2025 and 2026 counts in the trend chart are still filling in; treat the 2021-to-2024 window as the most reliable read on filing momentum.
Filing trend and technology composition
Two views of the same 303-record corpus: activity over time by publication year, and the IPC subclasses those records are tagged with.
A 2021 peak, then a step down
Filing rose from 2 records in 2017 to a peak of 34 in 2021, then declined to 25 by 2024, a 26% drop over that three-year span. 2025 and 2026 figures are not yet complete because of publication lag and should not be read as a continued decline.
Loudspeaker transducer classes dominate, but not exclusively
H04R (loudspeakers and audio transducers) appears on 77.2% of the 303 records, confirming this is fundamentally an acoustic-transducer field. A61N (electrotherapy), A61F (implants and prostheses) and A61B (diagnosis and surgery) each cover a meaningful minority, reflecting that coupling mechanics are shared with bone-anchored implant hardware and surgical fixation. G02C (spectacles) at 7.3% signals a smaller but distinct line of eyewear-mounted bone conduction designs.
Shares are the percentage of the 303 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
Go deeper on Bone Conduction Transducer Coupling with Eureka
This page is one run against one query. Ask Eureka your own question about bone conduction transducer coupling and every answer comes back with the patent numbers behind it.
Try EurekaRepresentative and most-cited filings
US20170086002A1 — Bone Conduction Transducer System with Adjustable Retention Force
An external component for a bone conduction hearing implant uses an electromagnetic drive coil and coil core with an optional removable spacer, magnetically interacting with an implant magnet to hold the external housing against the skin without electrical current, and adjusting that retention as current is applied.Filed by MED-EL Elektromedizinische Geraete GmbH, published 2017-03-23.
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | US20070041595A1 | Bone-conduction hearing-aid transducer having improved frequency response | 268 |
| 2 | US20130051585A1 | Apparatus and Method for Audio Delivery With Different Sound Conduction Transducers | 223 |
| 3 | US20150245131A1 | Contact hearing system with wearable communication apparatus | 206 |
| 4 | US20130169513A1 | Wearable computing device | 174 |
| 5 | US20110022120A1 | Magnetic Attachment Arrangement for Implantable Device | 128 |
| 6 | US20090245553A1 | Alternative mass arrangements for bone conduction devices | 101 |
| 7 | US7822215B2 | Bone-conduction hearing-aid transducer having improved frequency response | 84 |
| 8 | US20090209806A1 | Implantable transducer | 82 |
| 9 | US20120296155A1 | Magnetic Attachment Arrangement for Implantable Device | 79 |
| 10 | US20120083860A1 | Bone conduction transducer with improved high frequency response | 60 |
Citation counts favour older filings that have had longer to accumulate references; read them as a signal of influence on the field, not of current filing activity.
Each row carries its publication number; clicking a row searches Eureka by that number.
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Three read-throughs from the filing and citation data that matter for a freedom-to-operate or whitespace assessment.
Filing is concentrated, not fragmented
Five assignees account for 177 of the 303 records in scope, and the top 10 extend that to 78.2%. A newcomer is not entering an open field; retention-force and abutment coupling claim space is already staked out by a small group of established hearing-device and implant makers.
Post-peak filing has stepped down, not stalled
Filing rose steadily to a 2021 peak of 34 records, then fell to 25 by 2024 — the most recent year the trend can be read as complete. That is a real pull-back from peak activity, not a signal the field is closed; several leading assignees show zero filings in the latest year, which reads as reporting lag as much as retreat.
Coupling claims cross into implant and eyewear hardware
H04R dominates as expected for an audio-transducer field, but A61F implant claims (9.9%) and G02C spectacle-frame claims (7.3%) show the same coupling and retention-force problem being solved in adjacent form factors. A design that only searches H04R will miss prior art sitting in implant and eyewear classes.
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to bone conduction transducer coupling, with the prior art for and against each one.
Who holds the coupling claims
The ranked leaders span cochlear implant makers, hearing-aid manufacturers and at least one consumer-hardware entrant, with a long tail of single- or few-filing organisations behind them.
A single filer well ahead of the field
The top assignee holds 41 of the 303 records in scope, noticeably ahead of fifth place at 26 — a gap that suggests one organisation has built a broad portfolio around coupling and retention mechanics rather than a handful of point filings.
A wide base of smaller filers
Below the top 10, which together hold 78.2% of records, the remaining assignees in the 61-company ranking each hold small numbers of filings — evidence of specialist entrants (implant surgeons' groups, single-product startups) testing narrow claim variations rather than building broad portfolios.
Consumer hardware makers are filing alongside medical device firms
The presence of consumer-technology assignees in the ranked leaders, alongside cochlear implant and hearing-aid specialists, signals that bone conduction coupling techniques developed for medical implants are migrating into wearables and audio glasses.
| Assignee | Recent year | YoY |
|---|---|---|
| Starkey Laboratories, Inc. | 0 | -100% |
| Meta Platforms Technologies, LLC | 0 | — |
| Osseofon AB | 0 | — |
| Vibrant Med-El Hearing Technology GmbH | 0 | — |
| MED-EL Elektromedizinische Geraete GmbH | 0 | — |
| Cochlear Limited | 0 | — |
| Otolith Sound Inc. | 0 | — |
| Oticon Medical AS | 0 | -100% |
Where to take this analysis
The landscape points to concentrated core claims and thinner coverage in a few adjacent branches. The next steps depend on whether the goal is freedom-to-operate, portfolio strategy, or spotting a filing gap.
Run a freedom-to-operate check against the top holders
With 58.4% of records held by five assignees, any new coupling or retention-force design should be checked directly against their claim scope before development spend goes further.
Explore assignee claims in EurekaProbe the under-claimed branches
Adaptive feedback-path cancellation and eyewear-mounted coupling show thinner coverage than the core H04R space — worth a targeted prior-art search before committing claim language.
Search white space in EurekaCommon questions about this landscape
This landscape identifies 303 published records filed or published between 2015 and the 2026 data cut-off that match bone conduction transducer coupling terms such as retention force, skin attenuation, abutment osseointegration and feedback path. That count reflects records in scope for this specific search string, not every patent that mentions bone conduction generally. Because publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, the true number of 2025-2026 filings is still understated in this figure.
Filing is concentrated: the top five assignees together hold 58.4% of the 303 records in scope, and the top ten hold 78.2%. The leader alone accounts for 41 records, well ahead of the fifth-place holder at 26. The ranked list spans 61 companies in total, including cochlear implant specialists, traditional hearing-aid manufacturers, and at least one consumer-hardware entrant, with a long tail of smaller filers behind the leaders.
Filing activity rose from 2 records in 2017 to a peak of 34 in 2021, then declined to 25 by 2024, a 26% drop over that three-year span — the most reliable window available since later years are still incomplete due to publication lag. That pattern suggests the field passed an early growth phase and has settled into steadier, lower-volume filing rather than continuing to accelerate. It should not be read as the technology losing relevance; dense prior art in a claim space often produces exactly this kind of plateau.
US20170086002A1, filed by MED-EL Elektromedizinische Geraete GmbH, covers an external bone conduction hearing implant component that uses an electromagnetic drive coil and coil core, together with a removable spacer, to hold itself against the skin magnetically when no current flows and to adjust that retention when current is applied. Any design using magnetic-only retention combined with current-adjustable force in a similar external-housing arrangement should review this filing closely. It does not cover adhesive-only or purely mechanical clip retention mechanisms, which sit outside its specific magnetic-adjustment approach.
The technology composition shows H04R (audio transducers) covering 77.2% of records, while adjacent classes like G02C (spectacles, 7.3%) and A61F (implants, 9.9%) carry meaningful but thinner shares. That gap suggests coupling and retention-force techniques proven in the core H04R space have not been as fully translated into eyewear-mounted or implant-adjacent form factors. Adaptive feedback-path cancellation and skin-attenuation compensation algorithms also show comparatively lighter coverage relative to the core claim density, making them worth a targeted prior-art search before filing.
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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.