Gas Sensing with Infrared Absorption Patents: Who Leads, Where Gaps Are 2026
Gas Sensing with Infrared Absorption: patents behind NDIR and photoacoustic detection
Filing has cooled sharply. 2021-to-2024 filings fell 86%, from 35 to 5 records, though 2025-26 counts are still filling in as publications lag filing by about 18 months. Filings peaked at 72 in 2017 and fell to 5 by 2024, a -86% move from the 35 filed in 2021 to the 5 filed in 2024. Because publication trails filing by roughly 18 months, the 2025 and 2026 counts shown are still incomplete and should not be read as a continuation of the decline.
- 1CLOCK LTD30
- 2ANALOG DEVICES INC27
- 3NIPPON STEEL CORPORATION22
- 4NEVADA NANOTECH SYSTEMS INC21
- 5INFICON HLDG AG18
See the full gas sensing with infrared absorption 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 about this landscape
What counts as a nondispersive infrared (NDIR) gas sensor patent in this dataset?
This landscape includes filings that combine an NDIR, infrared gas sensor, or photoacoustic gas sensing approach with a claim element covering optical path length, reference channel design, cross sensitivity, drift compensation, MEMS emitter integration, or detection limit performance. It excludes general gas-sensing patents that do not touch these specific engineering problems. That combination is why the scope is 607 records rather than the much larger set of all infrared-sensing filings.
Why did infrared gas sensor patent filings fall after 2017?
Filings peaked at 72 in 2017 and dropped steadily, falling 86% from 35 in 2021 to 5 in 2024. This pattern is consistent with an early wave of foundational filings around calibration and reference-channel design being substantially claimed, after which fewer new entrants found room for novel claims in the core mechanism. It does not necessarily mean commercial interest in NDIR sensing has declined — only that patenting activity around this specific claim combination has slowed.
Is the NDIR and photoacoustic gas sensing patent field dominated by one company?
No. The leading assignee holds 30 of 607 records, and the five leading assignees combined hold only 19.4% of all records in scope, rising to 30.6% for the leading ten. That leaves the large majority of filings spread across a long tail of smaller filers, which means a new entrant is more likely to be competing against fragmented prior art than against one company’s cohesive patent estate.
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 Gas Sensing with Infrared Absorption 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.