PLC & Distributed Control Systems Patents: Leaders & Trends 2026
- 23.7% sits with five filers. the top five combined account for 6,895 of the 29,144 records in scope, with a long tail of single-digit and single-filing entrants behind them.
- Filings peaked in 2021, then cooled. 2,226 records that year fell to 1,421 by 2024, a 36% pullback over that three-year span, before the still-incomplete 2025-26 years understate current activity.
- G06F and H04L dominate the mix. 23.6% and 16.4% of all records respectively, meaning general computing and data-transmission claims outweigh classic control-and-regulation filings (G05B, 11.4%).
Filing growth compares 2021 (2,226 records) with 2024 (1,421) — a three-year span. 2024 is the most recent year we treat as complete: publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, so 2025 onwards are still filling in and any growth rate that ends there would understate the field. Top-5 share is the combined record count of the five largest assignees divided by all 29,144 records in scope (CR5), not by the ranked leaders only.
What this landscape covers
This dataset tracks patent filings at the intersection of programmable logic controllers and distributed control systems with the software infrastructure now wrapped around them: virtual machines, compute resource allocation, workload scheduling, service instances, and the control-parameter and process-variable data these systems generate and consume. It captures 29,144 published records filed or published between 2015 and the 2026-08-31 cut-off, spanning six major receiving offices, with the United States carrying the largest share.
The technology composition tells a story that predates any single company's strategy: the largest IPC subclass in scope is general-purpose computing (G06F), not the control-and-regulation class (G05B) a reader might expect to lead. That ordering signals where the field has actually migrated its claims — toward cloud, compute and data-transmission architecture layered on top of industrial control, rather than the control logic itself.
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Filing trend and technology composition
Two views of the same 29,144-record corpus: how filing volume has moved year over year, and how those records split across the eight IPC subclasses that carry the most weight.
A 2021 peak, then a real pullback
Filings rose to 2,226 in 2021, the high point of the series, then fell to 1,421 by 2024 — a 36% decline over that three-year span. Publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, so the lower counts shown for 2025 and 2026 reflect incomplete data rather than a continued slide; treat only the 2021-2024 comparison as a reliable read on direction.
Compute and transmission classes outweigh classic control
G06F (23.6% of records) and H04L (16.4%) each outrank G05B, the traditional control-and-regulation subclass at 11.4%, with G06N (AI-based computing, 11.6%) close behind. Because records can carry multiple IPC codes, these shares add to more than 100% of the 29,144-record total — the read is about where claim density concentrates, not about mutually exclusive buckets.
Shares are the percentage of the 29,144 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
Go deeper on PLC & Distributed Control Systems Patent Landscape with Eureka
This page is one run against one query. Ask Eureka your own question about plc & distributed control systems patent landscape and every answer comes back with the patent numbers behind it.
Try EurekaA representative filing and the most-cited prior art
Method for controlling an industrial plant (US12710735B2)
The claim describes a PLC that establishes a connection to a cloud server, runs a software module that creates or configures a virtual machine on that server, stores an access token, and then cooperates with the virtual machine to exchange process data and support control of the industrial plant.Filed by Schneider Electric Industries SAS, published 2026-08-18 — close to the data cut-off, illustrating how recent the cloud-orchestration pattern in this space still is.
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | US20190201136A1 | Method of HUB communication | 1,637 |
| 2 | US20190339688A1 | Methods and systems for data collection, learning, and streaming of machine signals for analytics and mainten… | 974 |
| 3 | US20140244712A1 | System and methods for virtual assistant networks | 846 |
| 4 | US20070112574A1 | System and method for use of mobile policy agents and local services, within a geographically distributed ser… | 796 |
| 5 | US20030109951A1 | Monitoring system for an industrial process using one or more multidimensional variables | 772 |
| 6 | US20130044636A1 | Distributed logical l3 routing | 768 |
| 7 | US20100105454A1 | Methods and systems for interfacing with a third-party application | 760 |
| 8 | US20200259896A1 | Industrial Automation with 5G and Beyond | 750 |
| 9 | US20200348662A1 | Platform for facilitating development of intelligence in an industrial internet of things system | 733 |
| 10 | US20210157312A1 | Intelligent vibration digital twin systems and methods for industrial environments | 716 |
Citation counts favor older filings simply because they have had more time to accumulate citations inside this corpus — read them as a signal of influence on the field, not as a ranking of current importance.
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Browse MCP servers →What the concentration and citation data indicate
Three readings of the same corpus: how tightly filing is held at the top, which prior art still shapes examiner reasoning, and what the technology mix implies for where claims are being staked.
Filing sits with a small group, but not a monopoly
The top five assignees combined account for 23.7% of all 29,144 records in scope, and the top ten reach 31.8%. That leaves more than two-thirds of the corpus spread across a long tail of the ranked leaders and unranked filers — a field with a recognizable core but plenty of room for a newcomer to stake a defensible position.
Old HUB-communication art still anchors examiner reasoning
The most-cited record in this corpus is a HUB communication method carrying 1,637 citations, well ahead of the next-most-cited filing on industrial IoT data streaming at 974. High citation counts concentrate on older filings almost by construction, since they have had longer to accumulate citing art — treat this as a map of foundational influence, not current relevance.
Compute infrastructure now outweighs control logic itself
General-purpose digital data processing (G06F) covers 23.6% of the 29,144 records, ahead of the classic control-and-regulation subclass G05B at 11.4%. Wireless networking (H04W, 7.0%) and AI-based computing (G06N, 11.6%) add further weight to the infrastructure side, suggesting most new claim activity targets how control systems talk to compute resources rather than the control algorithms themselves.
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to plc & distributed control systems patent landscape, with the prior art for and against each one.
| Assignee | Co-assignee | Shared families |
|---|---|---|
| AT&T Intellectual Property I, L.P. | AT&T Mobility II LLC | 165 |
| International Business Machines Corporation (IBM) | IBM DEUTSCHLAND GMBH | 58 |
| AT&T Intellectual Property I, L.P. | AT&T TECHNICAL SERVICES CO INC | 40 |
| International Business Machines Corporation (IBM) | IBM UNITED KINGDOM LTD INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY DEPARTMENT | 39 |
| International Business Machines Corporation (IBM) | IBM (China) Co., Ltd. | 30 |
| AT&T Mobility II LLC | AT&T Intellectual Property II, L.P. | 21 |
| AT&T Intellectual Property I, L.P. | AT&T Intellectual Property II, L.P. | 18 |
| GE Precision Healthcare LLC | General Electric Company | 18 |
Only 10 co-assignee pairs appear in this corpus, and the strongest pair — two affiliated AT&T entities — co-files 165 times, far ahead of the next pairs. Co-filing here mostly reflects intra-group structuring rather than cross-company collaboration.
Who is filing, and where momentum has cooled
The leader board spans industrial-automation incumbents, enterprise IT vendors and platform companies — a mix that reflects how far this claim space has drifted from pure control engineering toward compute and data infrastructure.
A single filer holds a clear lead, but not a majority
The top-ranked assignee holds 2,654 records, well ahead of the fifth-place filer at 761 and the tenth at 379. The gap between first and fifth is wide enough to call this a genuine leader rather than a crowded tie, but the drop from top ten to the rest of the ranked field is just as steep.
Recent-year filing has cooled across almost every tracked assignee
Every assignee with recent-year momentum data shows a year-over-year decline of at least 82%, and most sit in the -90% to -96% range. This mirrors the incomplete-data effect in the overall trend: the most recent year is still filling in, so a steep drop here should be read as a data-lag artifact for now rather than confirmed retreat.
IT and cloud vendors sit alongside automation incumbents
The ranked leaders include enterprise-IT names alongside industrial-automation and process-control specialists, plus at least one platform/e-commerce group. That spread confirms the technology-mix finding: this is no longer a field where only automation vendors file, because the compute and networking layer has become a claim target in its own right.
| Assignee | Recent year | YoY |
|---|---|---|
| AT&T Intellectual Property I, L.P. | 5 | -93% |
| Rockwell Automation Technologies, Inc. | 4 | -82% |
| GE Precision Healthcare LLC | 3 | -90% |
| Dell Products L.P. | 1 | -96% |
| Alibaba Group Holding Limited | 1 | -95% |
| Strong Force IoT Portfolio 2016, LLC | 1 | 0% |
| International Business Machines Corporation (IBM) | 0 | -100% |
| Qomplx, Inc. | 0 | -100% |
Where to take this from here
The dataset points to three practical next steps for a team deciding whether and where to file.
Check freedom-to-operate around the cloud-orchestration pattern
US12710735B2 and similar filings claim the PLC-to-cloud-VM handshake directly. Any product that provisions compute resources from a controller needs a claim chart against this pattern before committing to an architecture.
Explore in EurekaWatch the gap between G06F/H04L and G05B
The technology mix shows infrastructure classes outpacing classic control claims. Teams working on control-loop innovation proper may be filing into comparatively open space — worth confirming with a focused prior-art pull.
Run a deeper searchRe-check momentum once 2025-26 data settles
The steep year-over-year declines shown for the most recent year are very likely a publication-lag artifact. Re-run the assignee momentum view in 12-18 months before drawing conclusions about who is retreating from the space.
Track this landscapeCommon questions about this landscape
A single assignee leads the ranked field with 2,654 records, noticeably ahead of the fifth-ranked filer at 761 and the tenth at 379. The top five combined hold 23.7% of the 29,144 records in scope, and the top ten hold 31.8%, which means concentration is real at the very top but the majority of filings still belong to a long tail of smaller and single-filing entrants. The ranking includes 100 companies total, so it should not be read as a top-50 or top-100 list of the entire field — it is the full ranked set the data covers.
Filing rose to a peak of 2,226 records in 2021, then declined to 1,421 by 2024, a 36% drop over that three-year span. That is a real and complete-data comparison. Counts shown for 2025 and 2026 look much lower still, but publication typically lags filing by roughly 18 months, so those years are undercounted rather than genuinely quiet — the honest read is that growth cooled after 2021, not that filing has collapsed.
The largest IPC subclass in this corpus is G06F (general-purpose digital data processing) at 23.6% of records, followed by H04L (digital information transmission) at 16.4% and G06N (AI-based computing) at 11.6%. The classic control-and-regulation subclass, G05B, sits lower at 11.4%. Because a single record can carry several IPC codes, these percentages add up to more than 100% of the total — they show where claim density concentrates, not exclusive categories.
It claims a specific mechanism: a programmable logic controller that connects to a cloud server, runs a software module to create or configure a virtual machine there, stores an access token, and uses that token to cooperate with the virtual machine on process data and control support. A product that follows this exact sequence — controller-initiated VM provisioning plus token-based access plus bidirectional process-data exchange — sits close to the claim. Products that use a pre-provisioned cloud service without controller-side VM creation, or that authenticate differently, have more room to argue around it, but a proper claim chart is the only reliable way to know.
The technology mix points to under-claimed territory in a few specific places: wireless (H04W) integration with legacy control loops, multi-tenant isolation for virtual machines running on control-system gateways, and access-token lifecycle management for industrial cloud sessions. These sit adjacent to the dense G06F/H04L/G05B core but show comparatively thinner filing density. Any first claim in these areas should tie the compute or networking mechanism explicitly to a process-variable or control-parameter use case to distinguish it from generic cloud-computing prior art.
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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.