Production Systems Patents: Top Companies & Filing Trends 2026
Production Systems & Factory Design Patents: Who Files, Where the Claims Sit
398 families from the leading filer, yet the top 5 combined hold just 6.8% of all 17,496 records in scope — this field has no single gatekeeper. Filings ran at 840 in 2017, climbed to a peak of 1,039 in 2018, and by the last complete year on record (2024) had fallen to 635 from 971 in 2021 — a 35% decline over that three-year span. 2025 and 2026 counts are lower still, but publication lag of roughly 18 months means those years are not yet complete and should not be read as a continued slide.
- 1STRONG FORCE IOT PORTFOLIO 2016 LLC2.3%
- 2OMRON CORP1.2%
- 3CANON KK1.1%
- 4STRONG FORCE VCN PORTFOLIO 2019 LLC1.1%
- 5SIEMENS AG1.1%
See the full production systems & factory design patent landscape analysis in Eureka
- The complete ranking, not just the top five
- Every IPC branch with its share of the corpus
- The most-cited records, and where claim space is still thin
Common questions about this landscape
Who are the leading patent holders in production systems and factory design?
The ranking covers 100 companies, and the leading assignee holds 398 families in this dataset, ahead of fifth place at 190 and tenth place at 117. However, the top 5 assignees combined account for only 6.8% of the 17,496 records in scope, and the top 10 combined reach 10.7%. That means no single company or small group dominates; the field instead has a long tail of companies filing smaller numbers of production-system and factory-design patents, spanning industrial automation majors, oil and process companies, and portfolio-holding entities.
Is patent filing in production systems growing or slowing down?
Filing activity peaked in 2018 at 1,039 records and, across the last fully comparable window, fell from 971 in 2021 to 635 in 2024 — a 35% decline. Because patent publication typically lags filing by around 18 months, the lower counts visible in 2025 and 2026 are incomplete and should not be read as proof the trend is still falling. The reliable read is the 2021-2024 decline; anything drawn from the two most recent years needs another filing cycle to confirm.
Which technology areas have the most patent activity in this field?
Control and regulating systems (IPC class G05B) lead with 15.4% of the 17,496 records in scope, followed by business and commerce data processing (G06Q) at 10.1% and electric digital data processing (G06F) at 9.7%. Sector-specific classes also show up meaningfully, including earth and rock drilling (E21B) at 7.5% and plastics shaping (B29C) at 5.1%, reflecting how broadly production-system terminology is used across industries. Because a single record can carry multiple IPC codes, these percentages add up to more than 100% of the record total and should not be summed together.
Disclaimer. This analysis is based on Patsnap Eureka data drawn from a limited snapshot of global patent records and is provided for general information and reference only. Patent data carries inherent limitations — recent filings are under-counted because of publication lag, counts may be on a record or family basis, classification and applicant-name data may contain errors or duplicates, and the underlying search query defines the scope shown — so the analysis may be incomplete or inaccurate and may not reflect the full technology landscape.
Nothing here is an exhaustive prior-art, novelty, freedom-to-operate or validity search, nor does it constitute legal, financial or professional advice, and it should not be relied upon as such. Verify independently and review with qualified patent and legal professionals before acting on it.
Method: Filing trend and technology composition. Derived from a Patsnap search on Production Systems & Factory Design Patent Landscape covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-08-31. Counts reflect published records only and shift as new filings publish. Every share divides by all records in scope. Data: Patsnap Eureka. See the full landscape report.