BIM Patents: Who Leads, Where the Gaps Are 2026
- Filings are still accelerating, not maturing: the trend runs from 1 filing in 2017 to 3 in 2025, with the 2022 midpoint at 2 — a slow build rather than a spike.
- No single assignee dominates; 13 published families sit across a long tail of universities, colleges and individual inventors, with most recent-year momentum near zero across the tracked assignees.
- India and the US receive most filings, 6 and 5 respectively against China's 2, which says more about where applicants are filing first than about where the technology is being built.
What this landscape covers
This review tracks patent families at the intersection of parametric BIM modelling, clash detection, 4D construction scheduling and digital twin buildings, filtered to IPC classes covering design automation (G06F30/13), administrative and commerce data processing (G06Q10/06) and image/3D data processing (G06T17). The corpus is small — 13 published families as of the 2026-07-31 cut-off — which makes this a landscape of early positioning rather than of settled market share.
Because publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, the 2025 and 2026 filing counts in this dataset are understated; the visible acceleration from 2022 onward is likely to be revised upward as later filings publish.
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Filing trend and technology composition
Two views of the same 13-family corpus: how filing activity has moved year over year, and which technical subclasses carry the claim volume.
Filing trend, 2017–2026
Filings move from 1 in 2017 to 3 in 2025, with the 2022 midpoint at 2 families. The curve is short and still rising rather than plateauing, and the partial 2026 count will grow as later filings publish.
IPC subclass composition
G06F (electric digital data processing) and G06Q (business/admin data processing) dominate at 10 and 9 records respectively, meaning most claims are written around data processing and workflow logic rather than pure geometry. G06T (image/3D processing) appears in only 3 records, and a single B02C record (crushing/grinding) is an edge case likely pulled in through a shared assignee or classification artefact rather than a genuine BIM branch.
Shares are the percentage of the 13 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
Go deeper on Building Information Modeling Technology Landscape with Eureka
This page is one run against one query. Ask Eureka your own question about building information modeling technology landscape and every answer comes back with the patent numbers behind it.
Try EurekaMost-cited records in this corpus
US20180374052A1 — Method of improving building information modeling
A method for improving a building information modeling system for a construction project couples a field reporting functionality to the modeling system. That functionality obtains virtual project data tied to task resolution, provides a schedule modality that sets both a delivery timeline for project data and a resolution timeline, and provides a progress modality that links field data from the jobsite back to the project data.Filed by MOGAL, CHETAN; published 2018-12-27. The most-cited record in this corpus at 15 citations.
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | US20180374052A1 | Method of improviding building information modeling | 15 |
| 2 | US20210334422A1 | Systems and methods for sustainability and social interaction analysis in building information modeling | 14 |
| 3 | US20220391553A1 | Building information modeling systems and methods | 11 |
| 4 | US11270036B2 | Systems and methods for sustainability and social interaction analysis in building information modeling | 2 |
Citation counts reflect influence within the searched corpus and skew toward older filings; treat them as a signal of what shaped the field, not of what matters most today.
Publication numbers are shown where the record carries one (4 of 4 rows); clicking a row searches Eureka by that number.
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Three read-throughs from the filing trend, technology mix and citation pattern.
A small corpus still gaining speed
Filing activity roughly tripled from 2017 to the 2025 peak, with the 2022 midpoint at 2 families sitting almost exactly between the two. For a corpus this size, that is a genuine upward trend rather than noise — but it also means conclusions here should be revisited as more of the 2025-2026 cohort publishes.
Workflow logic outweighs 3D geometry claims
G06F and G06Q records together account for the bulk of the corpus, meaning most applicants are claiming data processing, scheduling and administrative workflow around BIM rather than the underlying 3D/image processing captured under G06T. That leaves geometry-heavy claim space comparatively thin.
India and the US lead receipt of filings
India receives the most filings in this corpus at 6, ahead of the United States at 5 and China at 2. That ordering reflects where applicants chose to file first, which is not always where the underlying R&D originates.
A long tail, no clear incumbent
With 13 families spread across universities, a research foundation, a construction firm and individual inventors, no single organisation has built a defensible filing block yet. Recent-year momentum is flat to zero for most tracked assignees, with only one showing a single filing in the latest year.
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to building information modeling technology landscape, with the prior art for and against each one.
Who is filing, and where the gaps sit
The assignee base is fragmented: universities, one research foundation, a construction engineering firm and named individual inventors, with co-filing pairs mostly limited to a single joint filing each.
University and institute pairs dominate co-filing
The strongest co-assignee links — Shenzhen University with Shandong Jianzhu University, and pairs of named individual inventors — each appear once, indicating early, exploratory joint filings rather than an established research consortium.
Only one assignee is active in the latest year
Among tracked assignees, only Sri Krishna College of Engineering & Technology shows a filing in the latest year; the rest, including Purdue Research Foundation and University of Toronto's governing council, show zero, and National Institute of Technology Durgapur shows a -100% year-on-year drop.
Filing activity is concentrated in India and the US
India's 6 filings and the US's 5 together account for the majority of this corpus, with China's 2 a distant third. That pattern is consistent with the mix of Indian academic institutions and US-based individual and institutional filers present in the assignee list.
| Assignee | Recent year | YoY |
|---|---|---|
| SRI KRISHNA COLLEGE OF ENG & TECH | 1 | — |
| Purdue Research Foundation | 0 | — |
| Governing Council of the University of Toronto | 0 | — |
| NAT INST OF TECH DURGAPUR | 0 | -100% |
| Shenzhen University | 0 | — |
| Zhejiang Posts and Telecommunications Engineering Construction Co., Ltd. | 0 | — |
| Shandong Jianzhu University | 0 | — |
| TANUJA D V | 0 | -100% |
Where to take this next
This landscape is a starting point for freedom-to-operate and whitespace decisions, not a substitute for a full clearance search.
Check claim scope on the cited records
The four most-cited patents in this corpus, led by US20180374052A1, set the reference points for what 'improving BIM' and 'sustainability analysis in BIM' already cover. Read their claims in full before drafting around field-reporting or social-interaction analysis features.
Explore cited patents in EurekaMap the under-claimed branches
Automated clash resolution, sensor-synced digital twins and cross-platform BIM interoperability show thin filing density relative to scheduling and workflow claims. That gap is worth testing against a live prior-art search before committing R&D spend.
Run a white space search in EurekaTrack the India and US filing bases
With India and the US receiving the bulk of filings, monitoring new publications from these offices will surface competitive moves earlier than watching China-origin filings alone.
Set up alerts in EurekaCommon questions about BIM patents
In this dataset, 13 patent families are published against the search criteria covering parametric BIM modelling, clash detection, 4D construction scheduling and digital twin buildings, filed between 2017 and mid-2026. That is a small, still-emerging corpus rather than a mature field with thousands of filings. Because publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, the most recent one to two years of activity will look larger once later filings publish.
No single organisation holds a dominant filing block in this corpus; the 13 families are spread across universities such as Shenzhen University and Shandong Jianzhu University, a research foundation, a construction engineering firm, and individually named inventors. Recent-year momentum is flat for most of these assignees, with only Sri Krishna College of Engineering & Technology showing a filing in the latest tracked year. This points to an open field rather than one with an entrenched incumbent to design around.
The IPC composition in this corpus skews toward data processing and workflow logic: G06F (electric digital data processing) appears in 10 records and G06Q (business and administrative data processing) in 9, compared with only 3 for G06T (image and 3D data processing). In practice that means most claimed inventions are about scheduling, coordination and project data management built around a BIM model, rather than the underlying 3D geometry engine itself.
Relative to the dense scheduling and workflow claims, branches like automated clash-resolution logic (as opposed to detection alone), sensor-synchronised digital twins, and cross-platform BIM interoperability show thinner filing density in this corpus. These are candidate areas for new claims, though a targeted freedom-to-operate search is needed before filing since a 13-family sample cannot rule out unpublished or differently classified prior art.
US20180374052A1, 'Method of improving building information modeling,' is the most-cited record in this corpus at 15 citations, followed by US20210334422A1 on sustainability and social interaction analysis in BIM at 14. High citation counts inside a searched corpus tend to favour older filings simply because they have had more time to be cited, so these figures signal historical influence on the field's vocabulary rather than which patents matter most for a filing today.
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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.