Magnetic Sensors (Hall, AMR, TMR) Patents: Leaders & Trends 2026
- Concentrated top. The top 5 assignees hold 269 of 609 records in scope (44.2%), and the top 10 hold 345 (56.7%) — over half the field sits with ten organisations.
- Filing has flattened, not accelerated. Annual filings peaked at 29 in 2020, fell to 12 by the 2022 midpoint, and the leading assignees each show 0 filings in the latest tracked year.
- Current sensing dominates the citation record. Four of the five most-cited documents in this dataset are integrated or clamp-style current sensors, not angle or position sensors — a signal of where foundational claims already sit.
What this landscape covers
This dataset tracks 609 published records filed against Hall-effect, magnetoresistive and TMR sensor claims that specify field sensitivity, stray-field immunity, linearity or current-sensing and angle-measurement applications, classified under G01R33, H10N50 and G01D5. Coverage runs from 2015 through the 2026-07-31 cut-off, so the most recent filing year is necessarily undercounted — publication typically lags filing by roughly 18 months.
The scope spans core magnetic-measurement claims (G01R) through to solid-state device structure (H10N, H01L) and storage-adjacent applications (G11B), reflecting how Hall, AMR and TMR technology sits at the junction of sensor design, semiconductor fabrication and data-storage read-head engineering.
Filing trends and technology composition
Two views of the same 609 records: how filing activity has moved year over year, and which IPC subclasses carry the claim density.
A peak behind us, not ahead
Filings rose from 23 in 2017 to a peak of 29 in 2020, then eased toward the 2022 midpoint figure of 12. Read against a flat-to-declining trend, this looks like a field where the core claim space was staked out early rather than one still building momentum.
Measurement claims dominate, storage and semiconductor structure follow
G01R (electric & magnetic measurement) appears in 85.2% of the 609 records, far ahead of G01D general measuring (25.5%) and H10N solid-state devices (21.7%). Because records carry multiple classes, these figures describe claim overlap, not a partition of the field — a record classified in G01R commonly also touches H01L semiconductor structure or G11B storage application.
Shares are the percentage of the 609 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
Go deeper on Magnetic Sensors (Hall, AMR, TMR) with Eureka
This page is one run against one query. Ask Eureka your own question about magnetic sensors (hall, amr, tmr) and every answer comes back with the patent numbers behind it.
Try EurekaThe documents shaping this field
Single line Hall effect sensor drive and sense — US20200300934A1
A Hall effect sensor system pairs a Hall element with a drive-sense circuit that supplies a DC current signal over a single line and simultaneously senses the effect that the sensor's magnetic-field-induced Hall voltage has on that same signal, producing a digital output without a separate drive and sense path.Filed by SigmaSense, LLC — illustrates the shift toward single-line drive-and-sense architectures as a way to cut pin count and wiring complexity in Hall sensor integration.
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | US6781359B2 | Integrated current sensor | 249 |
| 2 | US6137662A | Magnetoresistive sensor with pinned SAL | 187 |
| 3 | US6215299B1 | Linear position sensor having a permanent magnet that is shaped and magnetized to have a flux field providing… | 169 |
| 4 | US20130076343A1 | Non-contact current and voltage sensing clamp | 160 |
| 5 | US7265531B2 | Integrated current sensor | 157 |
| 6 | US7425821B2 | Chopped Hall effect sensor | 146 |
| 7 | US20060202692A1 | Magnetoresistive sensor element and concept for manufacturing and testing the same | 135 |
| 8 | US7323870B2 | Magnetoresistive sensor element and method of assembling magnetic field sensor elements with on-wafer functio… | 127 |
| 9 | US5686838A | Magnetoresistive sensor having at least a layer system and a plurality of measuring contacts disposed thereon… | 119 |
| 10 | US6504363B1 | Sensor for eddy current testing and method of use thereof | 115 |
Citation counts inside this corpus skew toward older filings and should be read as a signal of influence on later claim drafting, not as evidence that a document remains commercially central today.
Each row carries its publication number; clicking a row searches Eureka by that number.
Put your own technology through the same analysis
Eureka on the web
When you want the answer in the next five minutes.
The agent works the prompt against patents and technical literature, citing every source.
Run your analysis now →MCP server & REST API
When it has to run inside your own pipeline.
Patent search, landscape analysis and assignee resolution as MCP tools. Drop them into any agent framework, or call REST directly.
Browse MCP servers →What the numbers mean for a filing decision
Three findings that shape where new claims are likely to survive prosecution and where they are likely to collide with dense prior art.
Half the field sits with a handful of filers
The top 5 assignees account for 269 of the 609 records in scope, and the top 10 account for 345 — 56.7% of the field. New entrants are not filing into open space; they are filing around positions already staked by a small group of established sensor and semiconductor houses.
The filing curve has already turned down
Annual filings rose to a peak of 29 in 2020 and had fallen to 12 by the 2022 midpoint, with the leading assignees showing zero filings in the latest tracked year. That pattern is more consistent with a maturing claim space than with an emerging one, even allowing for publication lag understating the newest year.
Measurement claims are the crowded core
G01R electric and magnetic measurement claims appear in 85.2% of records, making it the densest single subclass by far. G01D general measuring (25.5%) and H10N solid-state device structure (21.7%) trail well behind, which is where design-around room is more likely to exist.
Current sensing carries the oldest, most-cited claims
The most-cited document in scope is an integrated current sensor patent cited 249 times, and three more of the top five most-cited records are also current-sensing or clamp-style designs. Angle-measurement and position-sensing claims are comparatively less represented among the heavily cited documents.
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to magnetic sensors (hall, amr, tmr), with the prior art for and against each one.
Who is filing, and who has slowed down
The ranking spans 100 companies counted by record; leadership is concentrated, but the leaders themselves show little recent activity.
A clear leader, then a steep drop-off
The top-ranked assignee holds 152 records, well ahead of the fifth-place holder at 24 and the tenth-place holder at 12. That gap between first place and the rest of the top 10 is itself informative: this is a field with one dominant filer and a long tail rather than several evenly matched competitors.
The biggest filers have gone quiet recently
Several of the most active historical assignees in this space show zero filings in the latest tracked year, some with a -100% year-on-year change from the prior year. That is consistent with the broader downward filing trend and suggests the leaders consider their core positions already claimed.
Filing strategy centres on the US and Europe
The United States receives the largest share of filings at 282, followed by the European Patent Office at 165 and WIPO/PCT at 52. China (26) and Japan (13) trail well behind, which matters for anyone assessing freedom to operate by jurisdiction rather than assuming global coverage follows the US pattern.
| Assignee | Recent year | YoY |
|---|---|---|
| MultiDimension Technology Co., Ltd. | 0 | — |
| Allegro MicroSystems, LLC | 0 | -100% |
| NXP B.V. | 0 | — |
| Honeywell International Inc. | 0 | — |
| Infineon Technologies AG | 0 | -100% |
| Western Digital Technologies, Inc. | 0 | — |
| Koninklijke Philips N.V. (Royal Philips) | 0 | — |
| Crocus Technology | 0 | — |
Where to take this analysis
The dataset points to a field with a settled core and specific thinner branches. The next step is testing a candidate claim against both.
Stress-test a claim against the dense core
Before drafting in G01R measurement or current-sensing claim space, run a freedom-to-operate check against the leading assignees' portfolios — this is where 44.2% of all records already sit.
Run a claim check in EurekaMap the under-claimed branches in detail
Single-line drive-and-sense architectures and TMR-based current clamps show thinner filing density than core Hall measurement claims. A deeper pull on those subclasses can confirm whether the gap is real or an artefact of classification.
Explore white space in EurekaTrack the momentum shift as it happens
With leading assignees showing zero filings in the latest tracked year, the next 12–18 months of publications (once the reporting lag closes) will show whether the field is truly cooling or simply pausing before a new wave.
Set up monitoring in EurekaCommon questions about magnetic sensor patents
The assignee ranking in this dataset covers 100 companies across 609 records, with the leading assignee holding 152 records — far ahead of the fifth-place holder at 24 and the tenth at 12. The top 5 assignees together account for 44.2% of all 609 records, and the top 10 account for 56.7%, so leadership is concentrated in a small group rather than spread evenly. This pattern is typical of an established sensor category where a handful of semiconductor and instrumentation companies staked out core claims early.
Not on the filing-trend evidence here: annual filings peaked at 29 in 2020 and had fallen to 12 by the 2022 midpoint, and several of the most active historical assignees show zero filings in the latest tracked year. Publication lag of roughly 18 months means the most recent year is always undercounted, so treat the very last data point cautiously. But the multi-year direction from 2020 onward points to a flattening or declining filing rate rather than continued growth.
In this dataset, all three technologies are searched together under shared IPC classes (G01R33, H10N50, G01D5) because they solve overlapping problems around field sensitivity, linearity and stray-field immunity. G01R electric and magnetic measurement claims appear in 85.2% of the 609 records regardless of which sensing technology is used, meaning the measurement-application claims tend to dominate over device-structure-specific claims. H10N (solid-state device structure, relevant to TMR stacks) appears in 21.7% of records, giving a rough sense of how much of the field is structure-specific versus application-specific.
Relative to the dense G01R measurement core (85.2% of records), branches like single-line drive-and-sense architectures, TMR-based current clamps, and stray-field-immune angle sensing show thinner representation. These are not guaranteed to be open — thin representation can also reflect narrower commercial demand — but they are lower-density starting points for new claim drafting than core current-sensing or position-sensing claims, where the most-cited documents in this corpus already sit.
Among the most-cited records in this dataset, an integrated current sensor patent (US6781359B2) leads with 249 citations, followed closely by other current-sensing and clamp-style designs including a non-contact current and voltage sensing clamp cited 160 times. High citation counts inside a searched corpus favour older filings, so these numbers reflect historical influence on how later claims were drafted rather than a statement that these patents remain the most commercially relevant today. Anyone drafting new current-sensing claims should expect to design around this cluster specifically.
Research Magnetic Sensors (Hall, AMR, TMR) in depth with Eureka
Go past this page: query the whole magnetic sensors (hall, amr, tmr) corpus yourself, in your own scope.
Every answer comes back with patent numbers you can open.
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.