Piezoelectric Actuator Patents: Leaders, Trends & White Space 2026
- Concentrated but not locked up. the top 5 assignees hold 24.6% of all 674 records in scope, and the top 10 hold 36.5% — leaving well over half the field to a long tail of single- and few-filing entrants.
- Filing has cooled since 2020. activity peaked at 32 records that year and has declined toward the present, with 2022's 14 records marking a flat-to-down midpoint rather than a growth curve.
- Claim space overlaps three IPC classes hard. H10N, H02N and H01L each cover more than half of all 674 records, so any new filing in the core actuator mechanism sits on already-dense prior art in at least two of the three.
What this landscape covers
This landscape covers 674 published records filed against piezoelectric actuators, piezo stages and multilayer piezo actuator constructions, scoped to filings that address hysteresis and creep, closed-loop positioning, blocking force, driving voltage or lifetime under load. The IPC scope spans H10N30, H02N2 and G02B7 — solid-state actuation devices, electric machines outside the standard rotating-machine classes, and optical element positioning respectively. Coverage runs from 2015 through the 2026-07-31 data cut-off.
Publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, so the most recent year in any trend undercounts real activity; treat 2025 and 2026 figures as provisional rather than a genuine drop-off. Family-level counts, used throughout the ranking, are the fairer unit here because they neutralise continuation filings and multi-jurisdiction duplicates that raw document counts would otherwise inflate.
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Filing trend and technology composition
Two views of the same 674-record set: how filing volume has moved year over year, and how records distribute across IPC subclasses.
Filing trend, 2017–2026
Filings rose to a peak of 32 records in 2020, held near 14 at the 2022 midpoint, and have declined since — down to 1 record in the still-incomplete 2026 count. Read the tail end as a publication-lag artefact, not a real collapse in R&D activity.
IPC subclass composition
H10N (65.0% of the 674 records), H02N (55.8%) and H01L (52.5%) dominate, reflecting how tightly piezoelectric actuator claims are written across solid-state device, electric-machine and semiconductor-device classifications simultaneously. B41J (16.5%), G02B (11.7%) and G11B (7.1%) mark the print-head, optics and storage-head application branches; B81B MEMS integration sits at just 3.4%, the thinnest-claimed class in the set.
Shares are the percentage of the 674 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
Go deeper on Piezoelectric Actuators and Positioning Stages with Eureka
This page is one run against one query. Ask Eureka your own question about piezoelectric actuators and positioning stages and every answer comes back with the patent numbers behind it.
Try EurekaMost-cited records and a representative filing
US20180006584A1 — Piezoelectric actuator apparatus and control method therefor
Filed by Sony, this record describes a piezoelectric actuator apparatus that moves a driven object at high velocity by applying a PWM driving voltage through an inductor and resistor connected in series to the piezoelectric element, controlling velocity by tuning the inductance and resistance values.Published 2018-01-04 — used here as a concrete illustration of a driving-voltage claim, not as the field's most-cited record.
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | US7408288B2 | Driving apparatus | 387 |
| 2 | US6222302B1 | Piezoelectric actuator, infrared sensor and piezoelectric light deflector | 118 |
| 3 | US6175180B1 | Method for optimizing the drive of a piezoelectric actuator, in particular for phacoemulsifier devices, by dy… | 110 |
| 4 | US4649886A | Fuel injection system for an internal combustion engine | 84 |
| 5 | US4499878A | Fuel injection system for an internal combustion engine | 78 |
| 6 | US5828157A | Piezoelectric actuator and pyroelectric type infrared ray sensor using the same | 77 |
| 7 | US5252883A | Laminated type piezoelectric actuator | 63 |
| 8 | US5089739A | Laminate type piezoelectric actuator element | 63 |
| 9 | US20040021398A1 | Piezoelectric actuator and pump using same | 55 |
| 10 | US6703762B1 | Actuator and driving apparatus thereof | 54 |
Citation counts inside this corpus skew toward older filings by construction — a high count signals influence on later filers, not that the claim is current state of the art.
Each row carries its publication number; clicking a row searches Eureka by that number.
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Browse MCP servers →What the numbers mean for a filing decision
Three read-throughs from the concentration, trend and composition data above.
The lead position is real but not dominant
A single assignee leads with 55 records, well ahead of fifth place at 20 and tenth at 14. That gap between first and fifth is wide enough to matter for freedom-to-operate work, but the fact that the top 10 combined still account for only 36.5% of the field means most records sit with smaller or one-off filers.
Filing has flattened since the 2020 peak
Volume built steadily to 32 records in 2020, sat at 14 by the 2022 midpoint, and has trended down since. Because publication lags filing by around 18 months, the last one to two years understate true activity — but the multi-year decline through 2022 was already visible before that lag effect applies.
Three classes carry most of the claim density
H10N, H02N and H01L each individually cover over half the record set — a record claiming a piezo actuator mechanism is very likely to sit in two or three of these classes at once. That overlap is where prior art is thickest and where a new filing needs the most careful claim differentiation.
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to piezoelectric actuators and positioning stages, with the prior art for and against each one.
Who is filing, and where the gaps sit
The ranking spans 100 companies by family count. A handful of imaging, precision-motion and electronics manufacturers dominate the leading positions, with co-filing activity limited to a handful of pairs.
One filer sits clearly ahead
The top-ranked assignee holds 55 records against a fifth-place figure of 20 — a gap wide enough that competitors entering adjacent claim territory should expect to design around an established portfolio rather than find open ground at the core actuator mechanism.
Most of the field is unconcentrated
With the top 10 accounting for only 36.5% of all 674 records, the remaining share is spread across many smaller filers — a pattern more consistent with an application-driven field (cameras, print heads, precision stages) than one dominated by a single platform patent holder.
Co-filing is rare and concentrated
Only five co-assignee pairs appear in the dataset, and the strongest pair files together just four times. Piezoelectric actuator development in this scope is overwhelmingly a single-assignee activity rather than a joint-venture or supplier-partnership one.
| Assignee | Recent year | YoY |
|---|---|---|
| Brother Industries, Ltd. | 0 | — |
| Seiko Epson Corporation | 0 | — |
| Panasonic Holdings Corporation | 0 | — |
| Kyocera Corporation | 0 | — |
| Physik Instrumente (PI) GmbH & Co. KG | 0 | — |
| PoLight ASA | 0 | — |
| Nikon Corporation | 0 | — |
| Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. | 0 | — |
Where to take this analysis
The dataset points to specific next steps depending on whether the goal is freedom-to-operate, licensing, or R&D scoping.
Check freedom-to-operate against the leader's claims
With one assignee holding 55 records and a visible gap to the rest of the field, any new filing near the core driving-voltage or closed-loop-positioning mechanism should be checked against that portfolio first.
Run a claim comparison in EurekaScope the under-claimed branches before filing
MEMS integration and audio-transducer piezo applications carry noticeably thinner IPC coverage than the core H10N/H02N/H01L overlap — a faster path to a defensible first claim.
Explore white space in EurekaRe-run the trend after the next publication cycle
Because publication lags filing by about 18 months, the 2025–2026 decline shown here should be re-checked once those years finish publishing before concluding the field is shrinking.
Set a monitoring alert in EurekaCommon questions on this landscape
The ranking covers 100 assignees by family count, with the leading company holding 55 of the 674 records in scope and the fifth-ranked holder at 20. That gap between first and fifth place is meaningful for competitive positioning, but the top 10 combined still account for only 36.5% of all records, so the field is not controlled by a handful of firms the way some sensor categories are. Camera, imaging and precision-motion manufacturers feature prominently among the leaders, reflecting the application areas — optical focus stages, print heads, fuel injection — where piezo actuation is most commercially deployed.
Filing volume peaked at 32 records in 2020 and has trended down since, with the 2022 midpoint at 14 records. Because publication typically lags filing by around 18 months, the very latest years in this dataset — including a single record so far for 2026 — understate real activity and should not be read as a sudden stop. Even accounting for that lag, though, the decline from the 2020 peak through 2022 suggests filing has flattened rather than continued to accelerate.
Three IPC subclasses dominate: H10N (solid-state actuation devices) covers 65.0% of the 674 records, H02N (electric machines outside standard rotating-machine classes) covers 55.8%, and H01L (semiconductor devices) covers 52.5%. Because a single record often carries codes from all three, a new filing touching the core actuator mechanism is very likely to face prior art search and examination across all three classes at once. Narrower application classes — B41J for print heads, G02B for optical positioning, G11B for storage — carry much lower coverage and correspondingly thinner prior art.
The thinnest-covered classes relative to the core actuator mechanism are B81B (MEMS integration, at 3.4% of records) and H04R (loudspeaker and audio transducer applications, at 4.7%). Both sit well below the 50%+ coverage of the core H10N/H02N/H01L overlap, suggesting less claim density in piezo actuators built into MEMS structures or dedicated audio transducer assemblies. A first claim in these branches has more room to establish novel positioning before running into the dense prior art that dominates the core mechanism classes.
Rarely. The dataset shows only five co-assignee pairs across the full 674-record set, and the strongest pairing appears together on just four records. This indicates that piezoelectric actuator development in this scope is conducted almost entirely as single-assignee, in-house work rather than through joint ventures or formal supplier co-development — a relevant data point when assessing licensing or partnership opportunities in the space.
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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.
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.