Smart-Building Systems Patents: Top Companies & Filing Trends 2026
- Filing peaked in 2020 at 67 records, then fell -83% from 2021's 58 to 2024's 10 — the last year the data can treat as complete.
- One filer holds 49 records, and the five leading assignees together account for 33.9% of all 493 records in scope.
- H04L digital transmission touches 24.5% of records, ahead of wireless networks and heating/lighting circuits — control-layer claims dominate over mechanical ones.
Filing growth compares 2021 (58 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 493 records in scope (CR5), not by the ranked leaders only.
What this dataset covers
The scope combines smart building systems and intelligent building control language with structural and infrastructure terms — structural load, deformation sensors, foundation condition, construction material — to capture patents where digital building control intersects with the physical structure it manages. That intersection is narrower than either field alone: it excludes pure IoT platform filings that never touch a building system, and pure structural-engineering filings that never touch control electronics.
493 published records sit in scope, spanning filings from 2015 through a 2026 cut-off. Because publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, the most recent one to two years in any trend understate actual filing activity and should be read as still filling in rather than as a genuine slowdown.
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Filing trend and technology composition
Two views of the same 493 records: when the filings happened, and which technology classes they touch. Both use the full record count as the denominator, so class shares add to more than 100% because a single record often carries several IPC classes.
Filing activity rose sharply through 2020, then contracted
Annual filings climbed from 25 in 2017 to a peak of 67 in 2020, then declined; the 2021-to-2024 span alone shows a drop from 58 to 10 records, an -83% change. Treat 2025 and 2026 figures as provisional given publication lag rather than as confirmation the decline continued.
Control and connectivity classes outweigh mechanical ones
H04L (digital information transmission) and H04W (wireless communication networks) lead the composition at 24.5% and 20.1% of records respectively, with H05B (electric heating and lighting circuits) close behind at 19.3%. G06Q (business and admin data processing) is the smallest major class at 9.7%, suggesting most filers are still building the control and connectivity layer rather than the commercial/service layer on top of it.
Shares are the percentage of the 493 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
Go deeper on Smart-Building Systems Patent Landscape with Eureka
This page is one run against one query. Ask Eureka your own question about smart-building systems patent landscape and every answer comes back with the patent numbers behind it.
Try EurekaA representative smart-building systems patent
Smart building system for integrating and automating property management and resident services in multi-dwelling unit buildings (US10650626B2)
A method for converting a legacy building into a smart building. The method includes calculating a distance between a first connection point and a second connection point, creating a cable sized to that distance, installing a demarcation point, installing a plurality of systems, connecting the demarcation point and a system using the cable to create a smart building system, connecting the smart building system to a portal, and testing that connection.Filed by Urban Sky, LLC; published 2020-05-12.
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | US20080281472A1 | Open Web Services-Based Indoor Climate Control System | 544 |
| 2 | US7904209B2 | Open web services-based indoor climate control system | 382 |
| 3 | US20120086345A1 | Solid state light system with broadband optical communication capability | 172 |
| 4 | US8214084B2 | Integration of LED lighting with building controls | 134 |
| 5 | US6318137B1 | Electronic lock that can learn to recognize any ordinary key | 131 |
| 6 | US8324817B2 | Light and light sensor | 109 |
| 7 | US10497250B1 | Real property monitoring systems and methods for detecting damage and other conditions | 105 |
| 8 | US8547036B2 | Solid state light system with broadband optical communication capability | 96 |
| 9 | US20090120653A1 | Fire suppression delivery system | 92 |
| 10 | US20180190268A1 | Speech recognizing method and apparatus | 84 |
Citation counts favour older records simply because they have had longer to be cited — read them as a signal of influence within this corpus, not as a ranking of current relevance.
Each row carries its publication number; clicking a row searches Eureka by that number.
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Four read-outs from the concentration, timing and citation data that matter for a filing or freedom-to-operate decision.
The field is top-heavy at the very front, then long-tailed
One assignee holds 49 records and the fifth-ranked holds 23 — a steep drop-off inside the leading group. The top 10 combined reach 49.3% of all 493 records, meaning the other half is spread across 90 further ranked entities with far smaller footprints each.
Peak filing has passed, at least on completed years
2020 was the peak year at 67 records; by 2024, the last year publication lag lets us treat as complete, annual filings had fallen to 10. New entrants weighing this space are filing into a quieter period, not a rising one, on the evidence available so far.
Control-layer claims outnumber structural ones
Digital transmission (H04L), wireless networks (H04W) and data processing (G06F) each outrank the structural-adjacent classes like air conditioning (F24F, 15.2%) and alarm signalling (G08B, 10.1%). Most contested claim space sits in how the building talks to itself, not in the physical systems it controls.
Early climate-control filings anchor the citation graph
The most-cited records in this corpus are indoor climate control and LED lighting-control patents from the 2008-2012 period, cited well above later filings. That reflects age more than current relevance — recent filings simply have not had time to accumulate citations.
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to smart-building systems patent landscape, with the prior art for and against each one.
Leaders, momentum and the open ground between them
The ranked leaders sit alongside a long tail of single- and few-filing entrants. None of the tracked assignees show filings in the latest year, consistent with the broader decline off the 2020 peak and the publication lag on recent filings.
A clear leader, then a fast drop to the pack
The leading filer's 49 records are more than double the fifth-place count of 23, and more than four times the tenth-place count of 12. That gap suggests one organisation built a deliberate filing programme in this space while most others entered opportunistically.
The next tier is where competitive contests actually happen
Positions two through five cluster together well below the leader, covering names spanning industrial controls, security systems and HVAC/fire-safety incumbents. This tier is the more contestable filing ground — no single actor has locked it down the way the leader has the top spot.
Co-filing is limited and mostly internal
Only 10 co-assignee pairs appear across the dataset, and the strongest is a corporate pair filing together at internal-entity scale rather than a cross-company alliance. Genuine joint-venture-style co-filing between unrelated companies is rare in this field so far.
| Assignee | Recent year | YoY |
|---|---|---|
| Ilumisys Inc | 0 | — |
| Siemens Industry Inc | 0 | — |
| SIEMENS CORP | 0 | — |
| SBI D Solutions Enterprise & Investments Ltd | 0 | — |
| TRAN BAO | 0 | — |
| Samsung Electronics Co Ltd | 0 | — |
| Altair Engineering Inc | 0 | — |
| Carrier Corp | 0 | — |
Where to take this next
The numbers on this page describe what has already been filed. Turning that into a filing or freedom-to-operate decision means going claim by claim.
Check freedom-to-operate against the leading filer
With one assignee holding 49 of 493 records, any new filing in the control or connectivity classes should be screened against that portfolio first, not last.
Run a freedom-to-operate checkDraft into the under-claimed sub-areas
Deformation-sensor integration and foundation-condition monitoring show thinner coverage than the core H04L/H04W classes — a first claim there faces less prior art to design around.
Explore white space with EurekaCommon questions about smart-building systems patents
One assignee leads the ranked field with 49 records, well ahead of the fifth-ranked assignee at 23 and the tenth at 12. The top 5 assignees together account for 33.9% of all 493 records in scope, and the top 10 reach 49.3%. Beyond that group, filings spread thinly across a long tail of the remaining ranked entities, most holding only a handful of records each.
Filing activity rose from 25 records in 2017 to a peak of 67 in 2020, then contracted; from 2021 (58 records) to 2024 (10 records) the decline was -83%. 2024 is the most recent year the data can treat as complete, because publication typically lags filing by around 18 months. Figures for 2025 and 2026 will keep rising as more filings publish, so they should not be read as confirmation the decline is continuing.
Digital information transmission (H04L) appears in 24.5% of the 493 records, the largest single class, followed by wireless communication networks (H04W) at 20.1% and electric heating and lighting circuits (H05B) at 19.3%. Control and regulating systems (G05B) and general data processing (G06F) both sit close behind. Business and administrative data processing (G06Q) is the smallest major class at 9.7%, indicating most patent activity concentrates on the control and connectivity layer rather than the service layer built on top of it.
US10650626B2, assigned to Urban Sky, LLC and published 2020-05-12, claims a method for converting a legacy building into a smart building by measuring the distance between two connection points, cutting a cable to that length, installing a demarcation point and building systems, wiring them together to form the smart building system, and connecting that system to a portal. It is a retrofit-cabling and system-integration method rather than a specific sensor or control algorithm. Anyone building retrofit installation workflows for existing buildings should read the full claim set before relying on similar cabling-and-demarcation steps.
The technology composition shows heavier coverage in digital transmission, wireless networking and heating/lighting control than in structural-adjacent areas such as deformation sensing or foundation-condition monitoring tied into control logic. Business/administrative data processing (G06Q) is also the smallest major class among those tracked, at 9.7% of records, suggesting the commercial and service layer above the control systems is comparatively under-claimed. These are areas where a well-drafted first claim faces less dense prior art than the core H04L/H04W 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.