Smart Home Device Security Patents: Leaders & Trends 2026
- 51.4% concentration. The top 5 of 94 ranked assignees hold 146 of 284 records in scope — just over half the field sits with a handful of filers.
- Filings cooled after a 2022 peak. Activity peaked at 55 records in 2022; on the complete-year comparison, 2021's 40 filings fell to 24 by 2024, a 40% drop.
- H04L dominates the claim space. 66.9% of records touch digital information transmission (H04L) — the densest single technical class in this dataset.
Filing growth compares 2021 (40 records) with 2024 (24) — 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 284 records in scope (CR5), not by the ranked leaders only.
What this landscape covers
Smart home device security and attestation covers the mechanisms by which a connected device proves what it is, what firmware it runs, and that it has not been tampered with before it is trusted on a network or granted access to payment, identity or automation functions. That spans secure element provisioning, firmware signing and over-the-air update integrity, certificate lifecycle management, and the newer wrinkle of regulatory labelling schemes that require manufacturers to document security posture. The 284 records in scope sit at the intersection of consumer IoT hardware and the cryptographic infrastructure historically built for payments and enterprise devices.
Filing activity spans receiving offices led by the United States, with meaningful volume through the WIPO PCT route and the European Patent Office, plus a smaller but consistent stream through India and Germany.
Filing trends and technology composition
The dataset spans 2015 to the 2026-07-31 cut-off, drawing on 284 published records and the IPC classes attached to each.
A cooling curve after a 2022 peak
Filings rose from 12 in 2017 to a peak of 55 in 2022, then eased to 24 by 2024 — a 40% decline from 2021's 40 filings on the last complete-year comparison. 2025 and 2026 figures will continue to fill in as publication catches up with filing, typically an 18-month lag, so the most recent years should not yet be read as a genuine slowdown.
Transmission and processing classes carry the field
H04L (digital information transmission) appears on 66.9% of records and G06F (electric digital data processing) on 51.8%, together framing this as primarily a communications-security and data-processing problem rather than a hardware-materials one. H04W (wireless networks) at 27.1% reflects the wireless link every smart home device depends on; G16Y (IoT data processing) at only 3.2% suggests IoT-specific claim language is still a minority approach even within IoT security itself.
Shares are the percentage of the 284 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
Go deeper on Smart Home Device Security and Attestation with Eureka
This page is one run against one query. Ask Eureka your own question about smart home device security and attestation and every answer comes back with the patent numbers behind it.
Try EurekaA representative filing and the most-cited prior art
Verification of a device by a verifier entity based on a device attestation
A method of verification of a device by a verifier entity in a communications network: the device receives information derived from device information from an issuer entity, determines binding data comprising that information and signs it, transmits the binding data to the issuer entity, and receives back a device attestation combining the device information, the binding data and the issuer's signature, which it then stores for later verification.Filed by Thales DIS France, published 2026-01-02 — one of the most recent attestation-flow filings in the dataset.
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | US20190349426A1 | The internet of things | 1,104 |
| 2 | US20160253651A1 | Electronic device including electronic payment system and operating method thereof | 782 |
| 3 | US20210117249A1 | Infrastructure processing unit | 222 |
| 4 | US10187363B2 | Hybrid integration of software development kit with secure execution environment | 204 |
| 5 | WO2018125989A2 | The internet of things | 188 |
| 6 | US20200084202A1 | Attestation token sharing in edge computing environments | 186 |
| 7 | US20210117242A1 | Infrastructure processing unit | 152 |
| 8 | WO2017200978A1 | Security-based slice selection and assignment | 151 |
| 9 | US20180167208A1 | Confidential authentication and provisioning | 141 |
| 10 | US20190140919A1 | Edge computing service global validation | 96 |
Citation counts favour older filings inside any searched corpus and should be read as a signal of influence, not of present-day relevance.
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Three patterns stand out once the ranking, the trend and the class breakdown are read together.
Half the field sits with a small group
With the top 5 of 94 ranked assignees holding 146 of 284 records and the top 10 holding 194 (68.3%), a new entrant is filing into a space where broad attestation and secure-element claims are already staked out by a small group spanning payments, mobile chipsets and platform vendors.
A peak, then a real pullback
The climb from 12 filings in 2017 to 55 in 2022 was followed by a decline to 24 by 2024 — a documented 40% drop over that span, not a publication artefact, since 2024 is inside the complete-year window.
This is a transmission-security field first
H04L and G06F together cover the large majority of records, while G16Y-tagged IoT-specific processing sits at just 3.2% — most attestation claims are written as general communications-security or data-processing inventions rather than IoT-native ones.
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to smart home device security and attestation, with the prior art for and against each one.
Who is filing, and where the gaps sit
The ranked leaders cross payments, mobile silicon and platform software rather than pure home-automation vendors, which shapes what kind of claims dominate the top of the table.
A single filer well ahead of the field
The leading assignee's 50 records outpace the fifth-place holder's 11, a gap wide enough to suggest one company treated attestation infrastructure as core IP rather than a defensive filing exercise.
A fast drop-off past the top few
The gap from fifth place (11) to tenth place (9) is narrow compared with the gap from first to fifth, pointing to a long tail of assignees each holding a handful of records rather than a second tier of serious competitors.
Even active filers are pulling back
Recent-year momentum among the assignees still filing shows year-on-year declines rather than growth, including a -33% move at the most active recent filer and flat or zero activity elsewhere among the historically largest names.
| Assignee | Recent year | YoY |
|---|---|---|
| Qualcomm Inc | 2 | -33% |
| Koninklijke Philips NV | 1 | 0% |
| Visa International Service Association | 0 | -100% |
| Intel Corp | 0 | -100% |
| Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC | 0 | — |
| Dell Products LP | 0 | — |
| Meta Platforms Technologies LLC | 0 | — |
| Samsung Electronics Co Ltd | 0 | — |
Where to take this from here
The composition and concentration figures point to specific next steps depending on whether the goal is freedom-to-operate or new filing.
Map claims against the top 5 in detail
With 51.4% of records held by five assignees, a freedom-to-operate review should start with their independent claims on attestation and binding-data flows before drafting around them.
Explore assignee claims in EurekaWatch the 2025-2026 filings as they publish
Because publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, the true 2025 and 2026 filing volumes are not yet visible; revisit the trend once those years complete.
Track new filings in EurekaTest claim language in the thin IPC classes
G16Y, H04B and H04N carry the lowest record shares in this dataset, which may reflect either genuine white space or claim language that has not yet caught up with IoT-specific hardware.
Run a white space search in EurekaCommon questions on this landscape
The dataset ranks 94 assignees by record count, and the leading assignee holds 50 of the 284 records in scope, well ahead of the fifth-place holder at 11. The top 5 assignees together hold 146 records, 51.4% of the field, spanning payments, mobile chipset and platform software companies rather than pure smart-home hardware makers. That concentration means a new filer is entering a space where a small number of firms already hold broad foundational claims on device attestation and secure-element handling.
Filings grew steadily from 12 in 2017 to a peak of 55 in 2022, then declined to 24 by 2024, a documented 40% drop over that three-year span. Figures for 2025 and 2026 are still incomplete because publication typically lags filing by around 18 months, so those years should not yet be read as continuing the decline. The complete-year evidence through 2024 does show a genuine pullback from the 2022 peak, not just a data artefact.
H04L, digital information transmission, appears on 66.9% of the 284 records, making communications-layer security the dominant claim area. G06F, electric digital data processing, follows at 51.8%, and H04W, wireless networks, at 27.1%. Because a single record can carry multiple IPC classes, these shares overlap and add to more than 100%, but the pattern is clear: this field is claimed primarily as a communications and data-processing problem rather than as IoT-specific hardware.
WO2026002991A1, filed by Thales DIS France and published 2026-01-02, describes a device attestation flow in which a device receives descriptive information from an issuer entity, signs binding data derived from it, sends that binding data back, and receives a signed device attestation combining the device information, binding data and issuer signature for later storage and verification. It sits among the most recent attestation-flow filings in this dataset. Anyone building a similar issuer-device-verifier attestation exchange should review its specific claim scope for overlap before implementing an equivalent flow.
The thinnest IPC classes in this dataset are G16Y (IoT-specific data processing, 3.2% of records), H04B (general transmission, 2.5%) and H04N (pictorial communication, 1.8%), compared with H04L's 66.9%. That gap suggests IoT-native attestation protocols and certificate handling for low-power or video-channel devices are comparatively under-claimed relative to general communications-security approaches. It does not guarantee the space is easy to file into, but it does mark where claim density is lowest today.
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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.