Switching Power Supply Patents: Who Leads Digital Control 2026
Digital Control of Switching Power Supplies: Patents, Leaders and Where the Field Is Still Open
32.8% concentration at the top. The top 5 assignees hold 360 of 1,099 records in scope, and the top 10 hold 41.4% — a genuinely concentrated field, not a diffuse one. Filings peaked at 59 in 2018 and ran at 55 in 2017. The most reliable recent comparison is 2021 (31) against 2024 (20), a 35% decline — 2025 and 2026 are still filling in as publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, so the last one or two bars understate true filing activity and should not be read as a continued drop.
- 1ROHM CO LTD17.4%
- 2POWER INTEGRATIONS INC4.7%
- 3MKS INSTR INC4.5%
- 4TEXAS INSTRUMENTS INC3.5%
- 5FUJI ELECTRIC CO LTD2.7%
See the full digital control of switching power supplies analysis in Eureka
- The complete ranking, not just the top five
- Every IPC branch with its share of the corpus
- The most-cited records, and where claim space is still thin
Common questions on this landscape
Who holds the most patents in digital control of switching power supplies?
One assignee leads with 191 records, well ahead of the fifth-ranked company at 30 records, in a ranking of 100 companies drawn from the 1,099 records in scope. The gap between first and fifth place is steep, which points to one dominant filer rather than a tight cluster of equally sized competitors. That said, the ranked leader’s own filing pace has slowed sharply in the most recent tracked year, so leadership in cumulative volume does not necessarily mean the fastest current output.
Is patent filing in this field growing or slowing down?
Filings peaked at 59 in 2018 and, on the most recent complete-year comparison, fell from 31 in 2021 to 20 in 2024 — a 35% decline. That is a real cooling in complete-year data. However, publication typically lags filing by around 18 months, so the 2025 and 2026 figures in any trend chart are still incomplete and should not be read as confirming a continued drop until later publications land.
What is the difference between a switching power supply patent and a digital control patent in this space?
Most records in this landscape combine both: they claim a switching power converter (captured mainly under IPC class H02M, 67.7% of records) together with a digital or variable control mechanism such as compensator tuning, current-mode sensing or adaptive dead-time logic (spread across G05F, H03K, G06F and G01R). Because a single filing can carry multiple IPC codes, the interesting claims tend to sit at the intersection — a power topology paired with a specific control algorithm — rather than in either category alone.
Disclaimer. This analysis is based on Patsnap Eureka data drawn from a limited snapshot of global patent records and is provided for general information and reference only. Patent data carries inherent limitations — recent filings are under-counted because of publication lag, counts may be on a record or family basis, classification and applicant-name data may contain errors or duplicates, and the underlying search query defines the scope shown — so the analysis may be incomplete or inaccurate and may not reflect the full technology landscape.
Nothing here is an exhaustive prior-art, novelty, freedom-to-operate or validity search, nor does it constitute legal, financial or professional advice, and it should not be relied upon as such. Verify independently and review with qualified patent and legal professionals before acting on it.
Method: Filing trend and technology composition. Derived from a Patsnap search on Digital Control of Switching Power Supplies covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-07-31. Counts reflect published records only and shift as new filings publish. Every share divides by all records in scope. Data: Patsnap Eureka. See the full landscape report.