Electric Motor Drive Condition Monitoring Patents: Leaders & Trends 2026
- Filing has already peaked. Activity crested at 7 families in 2023 and has since flattened, with the 2022 midpoint at just 3 — this is not a rising curve.
- Measurement, not control, dominates. G01R (electric & magnetic measurement) accounts for 18 of 28 records, nearly double G05B control systems and three times H02P motor-control filings.
- No single assignee has run away with it. Recent-year momentum shows single-digit activity spread across several assignees, with most holders logging zero filings in the latest year — the field remains contestable.
What this landscape covers
Electric motor drive condition monitoring sits at the intersection of sensing, signal processing and drive control: patents in this set claim ways to detect bearing wear, winding faults, thermal stress or airflow restriction in a motor drive before it fails. The search combines drive-hardware terms with fault-diagnosis and predictive-maintenance language, restricted to the IPC classes that cover motor-fault measurement, condition monitoring and control-and-regulating systems. That combination pulls in 28 published families spanning 2015 through the current data cut-off.
Filing offices skew toward the United States and India, with Europe, China, Japan and PCT filings making up the remainder — a pattern consistent with a technology still being filed defensively in core industrial markets rather than globally blanketed. Because publication typically lags filing by around 18 months, the 2025-2026 counts in the trend chart understate actual recent filing activity.
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Filing trend and technology composition
Twenty-eight patent families, filed between 2015 and the mid-2026 cut-off, define a small but technically concentrated field. The trend and IPC breakdown below show where claim activity has actually landed.
A flat-to-declining curve after a 2023 peak
Filings were absent in 2017, rose through the early 2020s, peaked at 7 in 2023, and sit at 2 in the partial 2026 year. The 2022 midpoint of 3 versus the 2023 peak of 7 followed by decline suggests a short filing cycle rather than sustained growth — treat the tail years as undercounted given publication lag, but the shape does not resemble an accelerating field.
Measurement claims outnumber control claims nearly 2:1
G01R (electric and magnetic measurement) leads with 18 of 28 records, ahead of G05B control and regulating systems at 10 and H02P motor control at 6. Smaller pockets sit in G01D general measurement, G08B alarms, G06F/G06N data processing and AI, and H04L data transmission — each in single or low double digits, indicating that sensing and diagnostic logic, not the drive-control loop itself, is where most claim activity has concentrated.
Shares are the percentage of the 28 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
Go deeper on Electric Motor Drive Condition Monitoring with Eureka
This page is one run against one query. Ask Eureka your own question about electric motor drive condition monitoring and every answer comes back with the patent numbers behind it.
Try EurekaThe most-cited records and a representative filing
Airflow health predictive maintenance for motor drives (EP4346091A1)
An airflow health predictive maintenance system and method for a motor drive includes a differential pressure sensor that senses an air pressure differential between a sensing location within an enclosed cabinet space of the motor drive and a reference location. The system includes an electronic control system configured to select a setpoint that indicates that airflow through the cabinet space has reached a value associated with a need for air filter maintenance. The control system is further configured to obtain air pressure differential measurements periodically from the differential pressure sensor and generate an actual trend comprising a series of values.Filed by Rockwell Automation Technologies; published 2024-04-03.
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | US20160018466A1 | Drive performance measurement | 36 |
| 2 | US9634600B2 | Drive performance measurement | 6 |
| 3 | US20200355526A1 | Motor drive and method for monitoring operational measurement data of a electric motor having at least one op… | 5 |
| 4 | US20200112279A1 | Variable frequency drive with integral machine condition monitoring and protection system | 5 |
| 5 | CN117310496A | 分布式电驱动系统的电机故障诊断方法 | 2 |
| 6 | US20250362330A1 | A monitoring device, a system and a method for monitoring insulation condition of a motor | 1 |
| 7 | CN114755575A | 一种新能源电动车用电动机故障诊断系统及诊断方法 | 1 |
| 8 | JP2019193510A | Machine condition monitoring device | 1 |
| 9 | CN205692033U | 一种电机驱动系统能源监控及故障诊断装置 | 1 |
| 10 | JP1985245488A | Defect detector of feedback for servo motor | 1 |
Citation counts favour older filings simply because they have had longer to accumulate citations inside this corpus; read them as a signal of influence on later filers, not as a ranking of current technical importance.
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 data means for filing strategy
Three patterns stand out once the raw counts are read against filing dates and IPC codes.
The field has already had its filing wave
Activity built steadily through the early 2020s, peaked in 2023, and has not sustained that level since. Combined with the small total of 28 families, this looks like a technology where the core claim space was staked out in a short window rather than one still being actively built out.
Sensing and measurement carry the claim weight
Nearly two-thirds of records sit in electric and magnetic measurement rather than in motor control (H02P, 6 records) or control-and-regulating systems (G05B, 10 records). New entrants competing on control-loop innovation face less prior art than those trying to patent new sensing approaches.
No assignee currently dominates recent filing
Recent-year momentum shows most tracked assignees, including established industrial names, at zero filings in the latest year, with only a couple of holders logging a single filing. Co-assignment is rare — only two co-filing pairs appear across the whole set — pointing to mostly independent, single-owner filings rather than joint development programmes.
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to electric motor drive condition monitoring, with the prior art for and against each one.
Assignee landscape and where claim gates sit
With 28 families spread across a mix of industrial automation firms, universities and individual filers, ownership in this space is fragmented rather than concentrated at the top.
Established automation vendors have gone quiet recently
Names such as Rockwell Automation and Fanuc appear in the ranking but show zero filings in the most recent tracked year, consistent with the broader post-2023 slowdown rather than a company-specific pullback.
A small set of filers are still active
Danfoss Power Electronics and Chongqing University of Technology each logged one filing in the latest year, making them the only entities in the tracked momentum set with any recent activity — worth watching for follow-on filings.
Filings are overwhelmingly independent
Only two co-assignee pairs appear across the dataset, each with a single joint filing. Most patent families in this set are owned outright by one entity, which simplifies freedom-to-operate checks but also means licensing routes into blocking claims run through single owners rather than consortia.
| Assignee | Recent year | YoY |
|---|---|---|
| Danfoss Power Electronics | 1 | — |
| Chongqing University of Technology | 1 | — |
| TALAS ELECTRIC OY | 0 | — |
| Rockwell Automation Technologies, Inc. | 0 | — |
| Volvo Trucks | 0 | — |
| Fanuc Corporation | 0 | — |
| Honeywell International Inc. | 0 | — |
| Tang Xidong | 0 | — |
Where to take this analysis
The dataset points to a small, measurement-heavy field with no dominant recent filer — useful context before committing R&D or freedom-to-operate budget.
Check freedom-to-operate against the most-cited records
The highest-citation filings, several sharing the title pattern around drive performance measurement, are the ones later filers have built on. Any new sensing claim should be checked against these first.
Explore citing patents in EurekaWatch the active filers, not the historic leaders
Danfoss Power Electronics and Chongqing University of Technology are the only assignees with filings in the latest tracked year; established names have gone quiet. Recent activity is a better signal than cumulative counts here.
Track assignee activity in EurekaDraft claims toward the under-claimed branches
AI-based fault classification, wireless telemetry and cabinet-level thermal sensing all show thin IPC representation relative to core measurement claims, suggesting room for a first-mover claim.
Run a white space search in EurekaCommon questions about this landscape
This landscape identifies 28 patent families published between 2015 and mid-2026 that match a search combining motor drive and variable frequency drive terminology with fault-diagnosis and condition-monitoring language, restricted to relevant IPC classes. That is a small, technically defined set rather than the full universe of motor-monitoring patents generally, since broader drive-control or generic sensor patents outside these IPC codes are excluded. Filing activity peaked at 7 families in 2023 and has since declined, so the total is unlikely to grow sharply from historic filings alone.
No single company dominates the current dataset; ownership is fragmented across industrial automation firms, universities and individual filers. Rockwell Automation Technologies appears with a notable representative filing on airflow-based predictive maintenance, and other tracked assignees include Danfoss Power Electronics, Chongqing University of Technology, Rockwell Automation, Volvo Trucks and Fanuc. Most of these show zero filings in the latest tracked year, meaning recent activity is a better indicator of who is currently active than cumulative filing counts.
Measurement and sensing claims dominate: the G01R electric and magnetic measurement subclass accounts for 18 of the 28 records, roughly double the 10 in G05B control-and-regulating systems and three times the 6 in H02P motor control. Smaller pockets of activity sit in general measurement (G01D), alarms and signalling (G08B), data processing (G06F), AI-based methods (G06N) and data transmission (H04L). This composition suggests that detecting and measuring faults, rather than the control response to them, is where most patent activity has concentrated.
Not currently. Filings rose from zero in 2017 to a peak of 7 in 2023, with a midpoint of 3 in 2022, and have declined since, with only 2 filings recorded in the partial 2026 year. Because publication typically lags filing by around 18 months, the most recent one to two years are likely undercounted, but even accounting for that lag the overall shape is flat to declining rather than accelerating.
The thinnest IPC representation sits in AI-based fault classification (G06N, 2 records), wireless or networked drive telemetry (H04L, 2 records), and edge-level data processing for diagnostics (G06F, 2 records), each far behind the 18 records in core measurement claims. Cabinet-level thermal and airflow sensing, exemplified by the Rockwell Automation representative filing, also appears only sparsely elsewhere in the set. These branches combine established IPC classes with low filing density, making them reasonable candidates for new claim drafting rather than crowded prior art.
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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.