Gate Driver Patents: Who Leads, Where the Gaps Are 2026
Gate Driver and Short Circuit Protection Patents
Concentration at the top. The five most active filers hold 42.8% of all 792 records in scope, and the ten most active hold 54.3% — a field where a handful of players occupy most of the claim space. Filings rose from 41 in 2017 to a peak of 92 in 2023, then eased off — but the 2021-to-2024 comparison (56 to 57, +2%) is the more reliable read, since 2025 and 2026 are still filling in under the publication lag. Treat the late years as incomplete, not as a downturn.
- 1SEMICON ENERGY LAB CO LTD131
- 2SKYWORKS SOLUTIONS INC75
- 3INFINEON TECH AUSTRIA AG58
- 4INFINEON TECHNOLOGIES AMERICAS CORP52
- 5TEXAS INSTRUMENTS INC23
See the full gate drivers and short circuit protection 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 gate driver and short circuit protection patents?
One assignee leads clearly with 131 of the 792 records in scope, well ahead of the fifth-ranked filer at 23 and the tenth-ranked filer at 17. That gap indicates a field where one company has built a substantial, defensible position around the core mechanisms rather than a tightly contested top tier. Any new entrant should map its own claims against that leader’s portfolio specifically before assuming general freedom to operate.
Is gate driver patent filing still growing?
Filing volume moved from 56 records in 2021 to 57 in 2024, a 2% change that reads as a plateau rather than growth or decline. The years after 2024 show fewer published records, but that reflects the roughly 18-month lag between filing and publication rather than a real slowdown. 2024 is the most recent year that can be treated as a complete picture.
What does desaturation detection actually protect against?
Desaturation detection monitors the collector-emitter or drain-source voltage of a switching device during conduction to catch short-circuit or overcurrent conditions before they cause thermal failure. A recent representative filing, US20250309881A1, uses two or more threshold values so the trip point can shift higher once a fault-mode signal is already present, avoiding false trips during controlled shutdown sequences. This kind of mode-dependent threshold logic is one of the more active refinement areas within the current filing wave.
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 Gate Drivers and Short Circuit Protection 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.