Industrial Automation Patents: Who Leads Control-Loop and Process-Sensor Claims
40.4% concentration. The five leading assignees account for 3,427 of 8,490 records in scope — a market where claim space near control loops and process variables is already crowded at the top. Records rose from 273 in 2017 to a peak of 936 in 2021, then declined to 470 by 2024 — a 50% drop over that three-year span. 2025 and 2026 figures are still filling in due to publication lag and should not be read as a continued decline.
- 1ROCKWELL AUTOMATION TECH INC15.3%
- 2NVIDIA CORP14.8%
- 3STRONG FORCE IOT PORTFOLIO 2016 LLC4.4%
- 4FISHER ROSEMOUNT SYST INC3.4%
- 5LG ELECTRONICS INC2.4%
See the full industrial automation patent landscape 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 industrial automation patents
Who holds the most industrial automation patents?
The dataset's assignee ranking shows one company clearly ahead of the field, with 1,300 records compared with 208 at fifth place and 155 at tenth. The top five assignees combined hold 3,427 of the 8,490 records in scope, or 40.4% of the field, so a small group of companies controls a disproportionate share of filed claims. This concentration spans classical process-control vendors alongside newer industrial IoT and AI-computing entrants, so a single-industry view of 'who leads' is incomplete without checking both groups.
Is industrial automation patent filing growing or slowing?
Filing peaked at 936 records in 2021 and had fallen to 470 by 2024, a 50% decline over that three-year window using the only two years in the dataset that can be treated as complete. Figures for 2025 and 2026 are still incomplete because patent publication typically lags filing by around 18 months, so those years should not be read as continuing the decline. The honest read is that the 2021 surge, likely tied to a wave of industrial IoT filings, has settled to a lower but still active baseline.
What patent classes matter most for industrial automation?
G05B, covering control and regulating systems, is the anchor class at 37.6% of the 8,490 records in scope. G06F (electric digital data processing) and H04L (digital information transmission) follow at 25.0% and 22.4% respectively, showing that most modern automation filings pair a control claim with a data-processing or connectivity claim rather than filing control mechanics alone. G06N, computing based on AI models, appears on 15.1% of records, marking AI-assisted control as a meaningful but not yet dominant slice.
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 Industrial Automation Patent Landscape covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-08-31. 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.