Capacitance Measurement Patents: Leaders & Filing Trends 2026
- Filing activity peaked in 2019 and has not returned to that level, with the 2022 midpoint sitting below half the peak — this is a mature field, not a growing one.
- Material analysis (G01N) outweighs pure electrical measurement (G01R) nearly two to one, meaning the sharpest recent claims sit in dielectric sensing applications rather than instrument circuitry itself.
- The United States receives more than double the filings of any other office, with Europe, China, WIPO, the UK and Canada each drawing a modest but real share.
Filing growth compares 2021 (2 records) with 2024 (5) — 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 144 records in scope (CR5), not by the ranked leaders only.
A mature measurement field with a dielectric-sensing centre of gravity
Capacitance measurement and dielectric characterization patents cover the instruments and methods used to determine dissipation factor, permittivity, temperature coefficient and related electrical properties of materials — from lab-grade impedance analyzers to inline sensors monitoring fluids and solids in the field. The dataset spans 144 patent families filed between 2015 and 2026, concentrated most heavily in material analysis and testing rather than in general electrical measurement instrumentation.
Filing activity rose to a peak in 2019 and has since declined, with the most recent full years running well below that high point. Publication lags filing by roughly eighteen months, so the final year or two in any trend chart will always look thinner than it eventually turns out to be — but the multi-year decline visible here predates that lag effect.
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Filing trend and technology composition
Two views of the same 144-family dataset: how filing volume has moved year over year, and which IPC subclasses carry the claim density.
Filing trend, 2017–2026
Filings rose from 3 in 2017 to a peak of 9 in 2019, then eased back; the 2022 midpoint of 4 sits below half the peak, and 2026 (partial year) shows 2. Read the last one to two years as undercounted given publication lag, not as a hard stop.
IPC composition
G01N (material analysis & testing) accounts for 94 of the records and G01R (electric & magnetic measurement) for 55 — the two overlap where a filing claims both a measurement method and a material-testing application. Smaller but non-trivial clusters sit in power conversion (H02M), temperature measurement (G01K), hydrocarbon oil analysis (C10G), dimensional measurement (G01B), power supply systems (H02J) and lab apparatus (B01L), pointing to capacitance sensing being adapted into adjacent domains rather than staying a self-contained instrumentation niche.
Shares are the percentage of the 144 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
Go deeper on Capacitance Measurement and Dielectric Characterization with Eureka
This page is one run against one query. Ask Eureka your own question about capacitance measurement and dielectric characterization and every answer comes back with the patent numbers behind it.
Try EurekaThe foundational filing and the most-cited records
US4246534A — Calibration method for lumped capacitance measurement of complex permittivity at HF, VHF and UHF frequencies
Filed by the US Army, this patent describes a calibration method for an automatic network analyzer measuring reflection coefficient and complex permittivity of unknown dielectric materials using a lumped capacitance approach. Its key insight is that the instrument's air-filled capacitance can be derived purely from reflection-coefficient measurements taken with air and a standard liquid of known permittivity, avoiding the need to calculate capacitance from physical dimensions.Granted 1981-01-20 — decades ahead of the 2015-2026 filing window covered by this dataset, and still a foundational calibration reference for lumped-capacitance permittivity methods.
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | CN101435788B | 基于介电常数测量的在线油液监测传感器及其系统 | 67 |
| 2 | US20100188111A1 | Apparatus and method for the measurement of electrical conductivity and dielectric constant of high impedance… | 55 |
| 3 | US7839282B1 | Capacitance probe for detection of anomalies in non-metallic plastic pipe | 46 |
| 4 | US7009409B2 | Determination of gasket integrity by capacitance measurement | 44 |
| 5 | US9995778B1 | Sensor apparatus | 43 |
| 6 | US20100321038A1 | Monitoring of the aging of the capacitors in a converter by means of capacitance measurement | 41 |
| 7 | US5489849A | High accuracy calibration-free electrical parameter measurements using differential measurement with respect … | 38 |
| 8 | US4350040A | Capacitance-level/density monitor for fluidized-bed combustor | 38 |
| 9 | CN101435788A | 基于介电常数测量的在线油液监测传感器及其系统 | 37 |
| 10 | US20160025663A1 | Method and apparatus for investigating permittivity in a target domain | 36 |
Citation counts reward older filings that have had more time to accumulate references within the searched corpus — treat them as a measure of influence on the field's vocabulary, not a ranking of current commercial relevance.
Patent titles are shown in the language they were filed in, not translated, so that each record stays verifiable against the original filing — a translated title will not match in Eureka or in any national register. Each row carries its publication number; clicking a row searches Eureka by that number.
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Browse MCP servers →What the numbers say about where this field stands
Three read-throughs from the filing trend, the citation table and the IPC composition, framed for decisions rather than description.
Volume has halved from its peak and kept sliding
The field is not accelerating. A peak of 9 filings in 2019 fell to 4 by the 2022 midpoint, well before the publication-lag discount applies to the most recent years. New entrants should expect established claim territory rather than a race against a growing pack.
Material-analysis claims outnumber pure measurement claims nearly 2:1
The dataset's centre of gravity has shifted from instrumentation-for-its-own-sake toward capacitance and dielectric methods applied to characterising specific materials — fluids, plastics, gaskets. Filers entering with a general-purpose measurement circuit claim alone are filing into the smaller half of the field.
The US is the dominant but not exclusive filing venue
More than double the next office, US filings set the baseline expectation for prior art search here. Europe and China each carry a meaningful but secondary share, and the WIPO PCT count suggests a portion of applicants are still deciding where to pursue national phase.
The most-cited work is an inline fluid sensor, not a lab instrument
The highest citation count in this corpus belongs to a dielectric-constant-based online oil monitoring sensor, not a bench-top impedance analyzer. Influence in this field has concentrated around field-deployable, application-specific sensing rather than general-purpose lab equipment.
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to capacitance measurement and dielectric characterization, with the prior art for and against each one.
Who is filing, and where the field is still open
Recent-year momentum across the tracked assignees shows zero new filings in the latest year across every name checked — a signal that this is a field of established filers holding position rather than one seeing fresh entrants push volume higher.
Even active historical filers have gone quiet
None of the assignees with recent-year momentum data show any filings in the latest tracked year. That is consistent with the broader decline from the 2019 peak, and suggests current activity — if any — is concentrated among filers not yet visible in this window or is genuinely slowing.
Co-filing is rare and mostly internal
Only seven co-assignee pairs appear across the dataset, and the strongest examples pair a single corporate assignee with named individual inventors rather than with another company. Cross-organisation collaboration is not a defining feature of this field's filing behaviour.
Filers pursue a conventional multi-office strategy
The spread across six receiving offices, led heavily by the US, matches what a mature instrumentation field would look like: applicants protect a home jurisdiction first and extend selectively rather than filing broadly across every available office.
| Assignee | Recent year | YoY |
|---|---|---|
| Noxolet Co., Ltd. | 0 | — |
| Halliburton | 0 | — |
| Siemens | 0 | — |
| Mayekawa Mfg. Co., Ltd. | 0 | — |
| Telofarm Ltd. | 0 | — |
| The Ohio State University | 0 | — |
| PROCESS TOMOGRAPHY | 0 | — |
| Quantum Design, Inc. | 0 | — |
Where to take this analysis
The trend and assignee data point to a field holding steady rather than growing — the open questions are about where remaining claim space sits, not about a race against rising filing volume.
Run a freedom-to-operate check against the top-cited records
The five most-cited patents in this dataset, led by an online dielectric oil-monitoring sensor and a high-impedance fluid conductivity apparatus, define much of the field's working vocabulary. Any new filing in fluid or gasket sensing should be checked against these first.
Explore citation clusters in EurekaMap the under-claimed adjacent branches before filing
The thinner clusters in H02M, C10G, G01K, G01B, H02J and B01L suggest capacitance sensing is being adapted into other domains faster than dedicated claims are being written there. A first-claim search focused on these overlaps could surface real white space.
Search adjacent IPC branches in EurekaTrack whether the 2026 dip is real or a lag artefact
Publication lag means the last one to two years of any filing trend understate true activity. Re-running this trend in twelve months will show whether the field is genuinely declining from its 2019 peak or whether recent filings simply have not published yet.
Set a filing-trend alert in EurekaCommon questions about this field
Capacitance measurement patents typically claim the circuitry or method for determining an electrical property such as capacitance, dissipation factor or impedance directly. Dielectric characterization patents apply that measurement to infer a material property, such as moisture content, degradation or composition, from the electrical signal. In this dataset the two overlap heavily — G01N (material analysis) records outnumber G01R (electrical measurement) records nearly two to one, showing that most recent filings claim the material-testing application rather than the measurement circuit alone. A freedom-to-operate search should cover both IPC classes rather than treating them as separate fields.
The filing trend in this dataset peaked at 9 filings in 2019 and had fallen to 4 by the 2022 midpoint, with 2026 (a partial year) showing only 2. This pattern is consistent with a maturing field where the core measurement techniques are well-established and further filings require a genuinely new application or improvement to clear prior art. Publication lag of roughly eighteen months means the very latest years always look artificially thin, but the multi-year decline visible well before the most recent years suggests a real slowdown, not just a reporting gap.
This dataset's recent-year momentum tracking shows several established assignees with a history of filings in the space, though none show new filings in the most recent tracked year. Rather than a single dominant leader, the field shows a small group of established filers holding position alongside a longer tail of single-filing entrants and individual inventors. Co-filing between separate organisations is rare, with only seven co-assignee pairs identified across the full dataset, most pairing a company with named individual inventors.
The strongest under-claimed branches sit at the overlap between the core G01N/G01R cluster and adjacent IPC classes that appear only in small numbers: power conversion (H02M), hydrocarbon oil analysis (C10G), temperature measurement (G01K), dimensional measurement (G01B), power supply systems (H02J) and lab apparatus (B01L). Each of these has real but thin filing density, which suggests capacitance sensing techniques are being adapted into these domains without yet being covered by dedicated, well-defended claims. A prior-art search focused specifically on these overlaps, rather than on the crowded G01N core, is more likely to surface genuinely open claim space.
US4246534A, granted in 1981, describes a calibration method for lumped-capacitance measurement of complex permittivity using reflection-coefficient measurements against a standard liquid, avoiding the need to calculate capacitance from instrument dimensions. As a granted patent from 1981, its original term has long since expired, so it functions today as prior art rather than an active enforcement risk. New filings should still study its calibration approach closely, since later patents in this dataset build on or work around the same air-versus-standard-liquid calibration logic.
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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.