Brushless Motors for Power Tools Patents: Top Companies & Trends 2026
- Filing is concentrated but not locked up. the top 5 assignees hold 20.9% of all 2,672 records in scope, and the top 10 hold 30.5% — leaving most of the field to a long tail of single- and few-filing entrants.
- Control electronics dominate the claim space. H02P (control of motors & generators) touches 44.5% of records, more than double the share of H02K (electric motors & generators) at 21.0%, showing where the drafting activity actually concentrates.
- Filing has cooled from its 2020 peak. the field peaked at 182 records in 2020, and 2021-to-2024 volumes fell 38% (92 to 57) — though 2025 onward is still undercounted because publication lags filing by about 18 months.
Filing growth compares 2021 (92 records) with 2024 (57) — 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 2,672 records in scope (CR5), not by the ranked leaders only.
What this landscape covers
This dataset tracks 2,672 published patent records filed against a search built around brushless motor control, torque density, sensorless control, thermal derating and related terms, matched to power tool and motor-drive applications. The scope runs from 2015 through the 2026 data cut-off, though the most recent one to two years are necessarily undercounted because publication typically lags filing by roughly 18 months. Records are drawn primarily from US, European, WIPO/PCT, German and Japanese filing offices, reflecting where brushless motor IP is actively contested.
The picture that emerges is a field with a moderately concentrated top tier and a wide base of smaller filers — some from adjacent domains such as surgical instruments, where motor-drive and sensorless-control claims overlap directly with power tool applications. Control electronics claims (H02P) outnumber pure motor-construction claims (H02K) by a wide margin, which tells a drafting team where the crowded ground actually is.
Filing trend and technology composition
Two views of the same 2,672-record dataset: how filing volume has moved year over year, and how records distribute across IPC subclasses.
Filing trend, 2017–2026
Filings ran from 98 in 2017 to a peak of 182 in 2020, then eased to 57 by 2024 — a 38% decline over the 2021-to-2024 span. 2025 and 2026 figures are shown for completeness but understate true filing activity given publication lag.
Technology composition by IPC subclass
H02P (control of motors & generators) appears in 44.5% of the 2,672 records, well ahead of H02K (electric motors & generators) at 21.0%. A61B (diagnosis & surgery) shows up in 11.5% of records, reflecting motor-drive crossover from surgical instrument filings, while B25F (combination & power hand tools) — the subclass most specific to power tools themselves — sits at 4.4%. Because records can carry multiple IPC codes, these shares add up to more than 100% of the record total.
Shares are the percentage of the 2,672 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
Go deeper on Brushless Motors for Power Tools with Eureka
This page is one run against one query. Ask Eureka your own question about brushless motors for power tools and every answer comes back with the patent numbers behind it.
Try EurekaRepresentative filing and most-cited records
US9923507B2 — Position-sensorless control method and apparatus for brushless motor
The present invention discloses a position-sensorless control method for a brushless motor. The method turns off a first driving voltage of a first phase coil and, within a detection window, detects the back electromotive force of that coil; from that back-EMF it determines a reference phase and cycle for a second driving voltage, derives a pulse width modulation signal from the reference phase and cycle, and uses that PWM signal to provide the second driving voltage to the motor.Filed by Shanghai Bright Power Semiconductor Co., Ltd.; published 2018-03-20.
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | US20160066913A1 | Local display of tissue parameter stabilization | 2,789 |
| 2 | US9826976B2 | Motor driven surgical instruments with lockable dual drive shafts | 2,668 |
| 3 | US9867612B2 | Powered surgical stapler | 2,607 |
| 4 | US9757128B2 | Multiple sensors with one sensor affecting a second sensor's output or interpretation | 2,524 |
| 5 | US9737301B2 | Monitoring device degradation based on component evaluation | 2,445 |
| 6 | US9814460B2 | Modular motor driven surgical instruments with status indication arrangements | 2,435 |
| 7 | US6017354A | Integrated system for powered surgical tools | 2,421 |
| 8 | US10136887B2 | Drive system decoupling arrangement for a surgical instrument | 2,252 |
| 9 | US10226250B2 | Modular stapling assembly | 2,209 |
| 10 | US10405857B2 | Powered linear surgical stapler | 2,097 |
Citation counts favour older records simply because they have had more time to accumulate citations within the searched corpus — treat them as a signal of influence, not of current technical importance.
Each row carries its publication number; clicking a row searches Eureka by that number.
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Browse MCP servers →What the data means for filing strategy
Three patterns worth acting on rather than just noting.
The top tier is real but leaves room
The top 5 assignees combine for 20.9% of all 2,672 records, and the top 10 for 30.5%. That leaves close to 70% of filings spread across a long tail of entrants — including several from surgical-instrument backgrounds whose motor-drive claims overlap directly with power tool applications.
Control claims outweigh motor-construction claims
H02P (motor control) touches nearly twice the share of records that H02K (motor construction) does. Filing density in H02P signals occupied claim space around sensorless control and drive logic, not that the underlying control problem is solved.
Volume has eased from its 2020 peak
Filings peaked at 182 in 2020, then fell from 92 in 2021 to 57 in 2024 — a 38% decline across the only span of years currently complete enough to compare. 2025-onward counts will rise as publications catch up, so this should not be read as a closing field.
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to brushless motors for power tools, with the prior art for and against each one.
| Assignee | Co-assignee | Shared families |
|---|---|---|
| JTEKT Corporation | Fujitsu Ten Limited | 5 |
| Black & Decker Corp | YAHNKER CHRISTOPHER R | 2 |
| Black & Decker Corp | TRINH DANH THANH | 2 |
| Black & Decker Corp | SEMAN ANDREW E JR | 2 |
| Black & Decker Corp | PHILLIPS STEVE | 2 |
| Black & Decker Corp | FRANCIS JEFFREY J | 2 |
| Black & Decker Corp | CARRIER DAVE | 2 |
| Black & Decker Corp | BROTTO DANIELE C | 2 |
Ten co-assignee pairs appear in the dataset; the strongest pairing recurs at 5 shared records, with most other pairs appearing once or twice — evidence of occasional joint filing rather than a dense partnership network.
Who is filing, and where the gaps sit
Filing activity clusters around a handful of established motor and tool manufacturers, with recent momentum data suggesting the leaders are not adding volume at the pace they once did.
One clear leader, then a steep drop
The leading assignee holds 162 records against 74 for the fifth-place holder and 40 for tenth place — a steep early drop-off that flattens into a long tail beyond the top ten.
Even active filers are pulling back
Recent-year momentum figures show some of the more active historical filers dropping to a single record in the latest year, with year-over-year declines as steep as -90% and -100% among named leaders — a sign that filing intensity, not just publication lag, is easing at the top.
Surgical-instrument filers are active here too
A61B (diagnosis & surgery) appears in 11.5% of the 2,672 records, reflecting that motor-drive and sensorless-control claims developed for surgical instruments are being filed into the same technical space as power tool motors.
| Assignee | Recent year | YoY |
|---|---|---|
| Black & Decker Corp | 1 | -90% |
| Eaton Corporation | 0 | — |
| Ethicon Endo-Surgery, Inc. | 0 | — |
| JTEKT Corporation | 0 | — |
| Linear Labs, Inc. | 0 | — |
| Eaton Intelligent Power Limited | 0 | -100% |
| Dyson Technology Limited | 0 | — |
| Infineon Technologies Austria AG | 0 | — |
Where to take this analysis
The dataset points to specific next steps depending on whether the goal is freedom-to-operate, competitive tracking, or claim drafting.
Run a freedom-to-operate check on control claims
With H02P claims covering 44.5% of records, a new sensorless-control or drive-logic filing needs a targeted prior-art search before drafting, not after.
Explore in EurekaTrack the leading assignees' momentum, not just their totals
Several top filers show sharp year-over-year declines in the most recent complete year, which changes how a competitive-watch list should be prioritised.
Explore in EurekaLook at the under-claimed branches before filing
Thermal derating, noise-and-vibration winding design and low-speed sensorless startup show thinner coverage than the core control classes, suggesting room for a first-mover claim.
Explore in EurekaCommon questions on this landscape
One assignee leads the ranked field with 162 records, well ahead of the fifth-place holder at 74 and the tenth-place holder at 40. The top 5 assignees combined account for 20.9% of all 2,672 records in scope, and the top 10 account for 30.5%, which means even the leading group leaves roughly seven in ten records held by a long tail of smaller filers. That tail includes entrants from adjacent fields such as surgical instruments, whose sensorless-control and motor-drive claims overlap directly with power tool applications.
Filing peaked at 182 records in 2020 and has since eased, with the 2021-to-2024 span showing a 38% decline from 92 to 57 records — the most recent years for which the trend can be read reliably. Counts for 2025 and 2026 appear lower still, but that reflects publication lag of roughly 18 months rather than a real drop in filing activity. A fair read is that volume has come off its 2020 high, not that the technology area is closing.
Motor control electronics dominate: H02P (control of motors and generators) appears in 44.5% of the 2,672 records, more than double the 21.0% share held by H02K (electric motors and generators themselves). Protective circuit arrangements (H02H) and power conversion (H02M) also carry meaningful shares, pointing to dense claim activity around drive logic, protection and power electronics rather than pure motor construction. Because a single record can carry multiple IPC codes, these shares add up to more than 100% of the total record count and should not be summed as if they were mutually exclusive.
US9923507B2 claims a position-sensorless control method for brushless motors that detects back electromotive force in a phase coil after switching off its driving voltage, then derives a reference phase, cycle and PWM signal from that measurement to drive the next phase. It was filed by Shanghai Bright Power Semiconductor Co., Ltd. and published in 2018. It matters as a representative example of the sensorless back-EMF detection approach that is common across this dataset's H02P-heavy claim landscape, and any new sensorless-control filing should be checked against it and its family.
The evidence points to comparatively thinner coverage in areas like thermal derating models for compact tool housings, noise-and-vibration-optimised winding layouts, sensorless control at low-speed startup, and overload protection integrated with efficiency mapping. These sit adjacent to the heavily claimed H02P control space rather than inside its densest core. A first claim in these branches would need to be checked against the leading assignees' existing families before drafting, since several of them file across both the core control classes and these adjacent branches.
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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.