Onboard DC-DC Converter Reliability Patent Landscape 2026
- Filing has cooled sharply since its 2017 peak of 7 records and the 2022 midpoint of 2 shows no rebound, though the last year or two is understated by publication lag.
- Packaging, not power topology, carries the claim weight H05K printed-circuit and housing subclasses outnumber H02M power-conversion filings, 10 records to 9.
- One 1980s patent still anchors the citation graph US4896637A is cited 45 times, far ahead of any converter-specific filing in this set.
Top-5 share is the combined record count of the five largest assignees divided by all 15 records in scope (CR5), not by the ranked leaders only.
What this landscape covers
Onboard DC-DC converters step voltage up or down inside a vehicle’s electrical architecture, and their failure modes are dominated by thermal cycling, vibration and capacitor aging rather than by conversion efficiency alone. This landscape tracks patent families filed against that reliability and durability angle specifically, filtered through H02M3/00 power-conversion circuitry together with H01G4 capacitor construction and H05K5 housing and assembly classes. The result is a narrow, mechanically-oriented slice of the broader converter art rather than a general power-electronics survey.
Fifteen published records make up the full corpus, and all fifteen resolve to fifteen distinct patent families — there is no continuation inflation to correct for here. That is a small enough set that individual filings, not statistical trends, are what a freedom-to-operate review needs to inspect directly.
Filing trend and classification spread
The dataset is small and its recent tail is thin, so read the shape of the curve rather than any single year's count.
A 2017 peak with no recovery since
Filings hit 7 in 2017, the highest point in the window, then fell toward a 2022 midpoint of just 2 records. Because publication trails filing by roughly 18 months, 2025 and 2026 figures are structurally undercounted and should not be read as a real collapse in activity — but the multi-year decline predates that lag effect and looks genuine.
Packaging classes outweigh core power conversion
H05K (printed circuits and assemblies) carries 10 of the 15 records, ahead of H02M (power conversion) at 9. H10W, H01F magnetics, H01M battery-adjacent claims, H02P motor control, and single entries in B60K and B60L vehicle-propulsion classes round out the set — evidence that housing, thermal path and mounting claims are doing as much work here as the switching circuitry itself.
Shares are the percentage of the 15 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
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US11251694B2 — DC-DC converter
The filing describes a DC-DC converter housing with a lower-plate flow path containing an expanding portion, where the expanding section's horizontal width exceeds that of the upstream flow path while its vertical width is reduced relative to it — a geometry aimed at managing the cross-sectional area differential along the cooling channel.Filed by LG Innotek Co., Ltd.; published 2022-02-15.
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | US4896637A | Power supply device for electrical equipment of an automotive vehicle | 45 |
| 2 | US20200077530A1 | Electronic component housing and DC-DC converter comprising same | 8 |
| 3 | US11284529B2 | Electronic component housing and DC-DC converter comprising same | 3 |
| 4 | US20220247305A1 | DC-DC converter | 2 |
| 5 | EP3544396B1 | DC-DC converter | 2 |
| 6 | EP3544396A1 | DC-DC converter | 1 |
| 7 | US11251694B2 | DC-DC converter | 1 |
Citation counts favour older, longer-indexed records; treat them as a measure of influence on the field's vocabulary, not of current commercial relevance.
Publication numbers are shown where the record carries one (7 of 7 rows); clicking a row searches Eureka by that number.
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Three patterns stand out once the counts are put next to each other: where claim density sits, what the prior art actually protects, and where filers have gone quiet.
Housing and thermal-path claims lead
With H05K ahead of H02M, the densest claim territory is physical packaging — housings, flow paths, mounting — not the switching topology itself. A converter design that changes only the power stage may still clear this art; one that changes the housing or cooling channel geometry is more likely to run into it.
A pre-digital patent still sets the baseline
US4896637A, an automotive power-supply patent, is cited far more than any converter-specific filing in this set. Its dominance signals that foundational automotive power-supply concepts remain the reference point examiners and applicants both cite against, even as packaging-level filings have multiplied since.
Activity has not rebounded since 2017
Every tracked assignee in the recent-momentum data shows zero filings in the latest year, including large players. That flat line, combined with the pre-2022 decline, suggests this specific reliability/durability angle has been deprioritised relative to broader converter efficiency or power-density work.
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to onboard dc-dc converter reliability and durability, with the prior art for and against each one.
Who is filing, and where the gaps sit
The assignee set spans automakers, tier-one suppliers and university research groups, but recent-year activity is flat across the board.
LG Innotek anchors the packaging claims
The representative filing in this corpus, US11251694B2, belongs to LG Innotek and centres on housing flow-path geometry rather than switching circuitry — consistent with the corpus-wide tilt toward H05K packaging art.
Toyota holds a position but is not pressing it
Toyota appears in the assignee set but shows no filings in the latest tracked year, matching the broader post-2017 slowdown rather than any company-specific pullback.
Rivian's filings dropped to zero
Rivian IP Holdings LLC shows a full year-over-year decline to zero in the latest period — the steepest drop-off recorded among tracked assignees, though the small base size means one or two filings would reverse it.
University filers are present but quiet
Presidency University and GITAM Deemed to be University both hold positions in the assignee ranking with no latest-year filings, suggesting academic interest in this narrow reliability angle has not translated into sustained filing programmes.
| Assignee | Recent year | YoY |
|---|---|---|
| LG Innotek Co., Ltd. | 0 | — |
| Rivian IP Holdings LLC | 0 | -100% |
| Toyota Motor Corporation | 0 | — |
| Mitsubishi Electric Corporation | 0 | — |
| PRESIDENCY UNIV | 0 | — |
| GITAM DEEMED TO BE UNIV | 0 | — |
| ACAD OF MARITIME EDUCATION & TRAINING (AMET) DEEMED TO BE UNIV | 0 | — |
Where to take this analysis
This landscape narrows a broad power-electronics field down to reliability and durability claims; the next moves depend on whether the goal is freedom-to-operate or new filing.
Run a freedom-to-operate check on housing geometry
Because H05K packaging claims outnumber H02M power-conversion claims in this corpus, any new converter housing or cooling-channel design should be checked against the flow-path and enclosure filings directly, not just against switching-topology art.
Explore this in EurekaPressure-test the white-space chips against full-text claims
The under-claimed sub-areas listed above are drawn from gaps in the IPC and citation data; a full-text claim read is needed before committing a filing strategy to any one of them.
Explore this in EurekaCommon questions on this landscape
The dataset shows a peak of 7 filings in 2017 falling to a midpoint of 2 in 2022, with no recovery since. Part of the recent tail is an artefact of publication lag, since filings typically take about 18 months to appear in public records, so the last one or two years understate real activity. But the decline through 2022 predates that lag window, which points to filers shifting attention toward converter efficiency and power density rather than the specific thermal-cycling and vibration durability angle tracked here.
In this corpus, H05K (printed circuits and assemblies) leads with 10 of 15 records, just ahead of H02M (power conversion) at 9. Supporting classes include H10W, H01F for magnetics, H01M for battery-adjacent claims, H02P for motor control, and single records in the vehicle-propulsion classes B60K and B60L. The takeaway is that housing, mounting and thermal-path claims carry as much weight as the core switching circuitry in this reliability-focused slice of the art.
It is the most-cited record in this corpus at 45 citations, well ahead of the next-highest count of 8, so it remains a common reference point in examination and prior-art searches. Its age means it predates modern packaging and thermal-management approaches, so it is more useful as a baseline for automotive power-supply concepts than as a direct block on current housing or capacitor-specific claims. Any new filing should still be checked against it, particularly if it touches basic automotive power-supply architecture.
The tracked assignee set includes LG Innotek, Rivian IP Holdings LLC, Toyota, Mitsubishi Electric, and university filers including Presidency University and GITAM Deemed to be University. All of them show zero filings in the latest tracked year, and Rivian's position specifically shows a full year-over-year drop to zero. Given the small corpus size, this reflects the field's overall slowdown rather than any single company's exit.
The under-claimed areas sit adjacent to the dense packaging and citation clusters: capacitor aging behaviour under thermal cycling, vibration-isolating mount geometry, flow-path cross-section optimisation for cooling, magnetics durability under automotive duty cycles, and converter integration with battery-adjacent architectures. These are inferred from gaps between the IPC composition and citation data rather than from an exhaustive full-text claim search, so a claims-level check is a necessary next step before filing.
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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.
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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.