Powered Toothbrush Design Patents: Top Companies & Trends 2026
- 72.4% concentration. The top 5 assignees hold 207 of 286 records in scope, so most new claim space collides with a handful of incumbents.
- Filing has plateaued, not fallen. 2021 and 2024 both sit at 10 filings a year after a 2022 peak of 57, a flat three-year span rather than a genuine slowdown.
- Power and sensing trail brushing mechanics. H02J power supply appears in only 10.8% of records and A61N electrotherapy in 6.6%, far behind the 60.1% carrying A61C dentistry classes.
Filing growth compares 2021 (10 records) with 2024 (10) — 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 286 records in scope (CR5), not by the ranked leaders only.
What this landscape covers
Powered toothbrush design sits at the intersection of dental hygiene hardware and consumer electronics. The search scope here pulls records that combine a powered toothbrush or electric brush head with a specific functional claim: bristle motion, pressure sensing, brushing coverage, sonic frequency, battery charging, or plaque removal efficacy. That combination filters out generic manual-brush design patents and generic battery patents, leaving 286 records that describe how the device senses, moves, or powers itself during brushing.
The dataset runs from 2015 through the 2026-07-31 cut-off, though publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, so the most recent one to two years understate real activity. Records are drawn from multiple receiving offices, with the United States and the European Patent Office each accounting for the largest single shares, followed by WIPO PCT filings and a smaller but active India office presence.
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Filing trend and technology composition
The filing curve and the IPC breakdown together show a field that built up quickly through the early 2020s and now files at a steady rate, concentrated heavily in brush mechanics rather than in sensing or power electronics.
A peak in 2022, then a plateau
Filings rose from 3 in 2017 to a peak of 57 in 2022, then settled at 10 in both 2021 and 2024 – a flat span rather than a decline, once the 18-month publication lag is accounted for in the most recent years.
Brush mechanics dominate the classification mix
A61C (dentistry & oral hygiene) and A46B (brushes) appear in 60.1% and 52.8% of the 286 records respectively, far ahead of A61B diagnosis classes at 15.0% and H02J power supply at 10.8%. Because records can carry multiple IPC codes, these shares sum to more than 100% of the record total.
Shares are the percentage of the 286 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
Go deeper on Powered Toothbrush Design with Eureka
This page is one run against one query. Ask Eureka your own question about powered toothbrush design and every answer comes back with the patent numbers behind it.
Try EurekaMost-cited records and a recent representative filing
US12697196B1 – Pressure-safe electric toothbrush
An electric toothbrush head includes a bristle field with responsive bristles that decrease in stiffness in response to excessive brushing pressure. The toothbrush head also features a mechanical force-protection mechanism, which induces a reversible displacement of the bristle field in response to excessive brushing force. These features help to mitigate the effects of excessive force and provide a safer brushing experience.Filed by an individual inventor rather than one of the ranked leaders, illustrating that pressure-safety mechanics remain open to new entrants.
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | US7269873B2 | Ultrasonic toothbrushes employing an acoustic waveguide | 401 |
| 2 | US6331744B1 | Contactless energy transfer apparatus | 329 |
| 3 | US20110040235A1 | Multi-Modal Drug Delivery System | 238 |
| 4 | US5341534A | Electric toothbrush | 198 |
| 5 | US20080209650A1 | Oral hygiene devices | 195 |
| 6 | WO2006119376A2 | Oral hygiene devices employing an acoustic waveguide | 195 |
| 7 | US6611780B2 | System for communicating operational data between an electric toothbrush and a separate control unit | 188 |
| 8 | US20030030342A1 | Contactless energy transfer apparatus | 152 |
| 9 | US8523791B2 | Multi-modal drug delivery system | 147 |
| 10 | US7117555B2 | Toothbrush with movable head sections for enhanced oral care | 138 |
Citation counts reward older filings that have had more time to accumulate citations inside the searched corpus; treat them as a signal of influence on the field, not of current commercial weight.
Each row carries its publication number; clicking a row searches Eureka by that number.
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Three patterns matter most for anyone deciding where to file next: how concentrated ownership already is, how the technology mix splits between mechanical and electronic claims, and how citation weight sits with older foundational patents rather than recent ones.
Ownership is heavily concentrated
The top 5 assignees combined account for 207 of the 286 records in scope, and the top 10 extend that to 84.3%. A field this concentrated at the top, with a long tail of single- or few-filing entrants below rank ten, means most white space sits away from core bristle and brush-head mechanics.
Activity has plateaued since the 2022 peak
Filings hit 57 in 2022 before settling back to 10 in both 2021 and 2024, a flat three-year span rather than a genuine slowdown. Because publication lags filing by about 18 months, the 2025-2026 figures will fill in further before the true recent trend is visible.
Brush mechanics crowd the claim space
A61C dentistry classes and A46B brush classes appear in well over half of all records, while H02J power-supply claims sit at 10.8% and A61N electrotherapy at 6.6%. Charging architecture and sensing integration remain comparatively open relative to bristle and head-geometry claims.
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to powered toothbrush design, with the prior art for and against each one.
Who is filing, and where the field is still open
A small group of established oral-care and consumer-electronics firms holds most of the ranked records, but recent-year momentum has cooled across all of the leading assignees, and several functional branches remain thin.
One filer holds a clear lead
The leading assignee's record count is more than double the fifth-place holder's 8 records, a gap that marks this as a field with one dominant filer rather than several evenly matched competitors.
Momentum has cooled at the top
Several of the most active historical filers show zero filings in the latest year tracked, including the top-ranked assignee at -100% year-on-year. This is consistent with the broader 18-month publication lag rather than necessarily a strategic pullback.
A long tail below the top ten
Beyond the top 10, which together hold 84.3% of the 286 records, the remaining ranked companies each hold small counts. That structure suggests opportunities for focused entrants in narrower functional niches rather than head-on competition with the leaders.
| Assignee | Recent year | YoY |
|---|---|---|
| Koninklijke Philips N.V. | 0 | -100% |
| ZeroBrush Inc. | 0 | — |
| Colgate-Palmolive Co. | 0 | — |
| Ultreo Inc. | 0 | — |
| Light Science Corp. | 0 | — |
| Dyson Technology Ltd. | 0 | — |
| Procter & Gamble Co. | 0 | — |
| The Gillette Co. | 0 | — |
Where to take this analysis
The patterns above point to specific follow-up work depending on whether the goal is freedom-to-operate, portfolio benchmarking, or scouting acquisition targets.
Run a freedom-to-operate check
Before drafting claims in bristle mechanics or brush-head geometry, check the dense A61C and A46B claim space held by the top 5 assignees against your specific mechanism.
Explore with Patsnap EurekaTrack the under-claimed branches
Charging architecture, pressure sensing and coverage-mapping claims sit at lower density than brush mechanics and may offer more room to file without direct collision.
Explore with Patsnap EurekaWatch for the 2025-2026 correction
Because publication lags filing by about 18 months, the apparent plateau after 2022 will firm up or reverse as 2025-2026 filings continue to publish.
Explore with Patsnap EurekaCommon questions about powered toothbrush design patents
The dataset ranks 64 companies, with the leading assignee holding 118 of the 286 records in scope, far ahead of the fifth-place holder's 8 records. The top 5 assignees combined account for 72.4% of all records, and the top 10 account for 84.3%. This means ownership is concentrated at the very top, with a long tail of companies holding only a handful of filings each.
Filing peaked at 57 records in 2022 and has since settled to a lower steady rate, with 2021 and 2024 both recording 10 filings, a flat 0% change over that span. Because publication typically lags actual filing by about 18 months, the 2025 and 2026 figures in any dataset will keep rising as more records publish, so it is too early to call this a decline. The right reading is a plateau after a sharp early-2020s buildup, not a slowdown in real activity.
Brush mechanics dominate: A61C dentistry and oral hygiene classifications appear in 60.1% of the 286 records, and A46B brush classifications appear in 52.8%. Power supply claims under H02J and electrotherapy claims under A61N are far less common, at 10.8% and 6.6% respectively. Because a single record can carry multiple classifications, these figures do not sum to 100% and should be read as independent shares of the same record total.
The functional branches around charging architecture, real-time pressure feedback, brushing coverage mapping and sonic frequency modulation show comparatively lower filing density than bristle and brush-head mechanics. A new entrant working on sensor integration or force-protection mechanisms, like the responsive-bristle approach in US12697196B1, is less likely to collide directly with the dense prior art that sits over core bristle and head geometry. That said, low density in a subclass is not a guarantee of openness – it warrants a targeted freedom-to-operate search before filing.
The most-cited records in this dataset, such as US7269873B2 and US6331744B1, are older filings that have simply had more time in circulation to accumulate citations within the searched corpus. High citation counts are a reasonable signal of historical influence on how the field developed, but they understate the importance of recent filings that have not yet had time to be cited. Anyone using citation counts to judge current commercial relevance should weight them against filing recency rather than treating them as a standalone importance score.
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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.