Smart Water Meter Patents: Who Leads, Where the Gaps Are 2026
Filing growth compares 2021 (642 records) with 2024 (381) — 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 3,234 records in scope (CR5), not by the ranked leaders only.
What the smart water meter patent record actually covers
Despite the name, most records tagged to smart water meter filings are built on wireless and digital-transmission scaffolding rather than water-metrology hardware. The dominant IPC classes are H04W (wireless communication networks) and H04L (digital information transmission), which together sit well ahead of G01F (flow, level and volume measuring) — the class that most directly describes the metering sensor itself. That pattern says the competitive claim space in this dataset is largely about how meter data gets transmitted, aggregated and acted on, not about how water flow is sensed.
Filing activity ran from 172 records in 2017 to a peak of 642 in 2021, then eased to 381 by 2024 — the last year in the trend that can be read as complete, since publication typically lags filing by around 18 months and 2025-2026 counts will still fill in. Receiving-office data shows the United States and the EPO carrying the largest shares of filings, with India, Australia, Singapore and Germany forming a second tier.
Filing trends and technology composition
The figures below are drawn directly from the 3,234 published records in scope, spanning the 2015-2026 coverage window with a data cut-off of 2026-07-31.
Filing trend: rise, 2021 peak, pullback
Annual filings grew from 172 in 2017 to a peak of 642 in 2021, then declined to 381 by 2024 — a 41% drop over that three-year span. Because publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, 2025 and 2026 figures are still incomplete and should not be read as a continued decline.
IPC composition: wireless and transmission classes dominate
H04W (57.3%) and H04L (37.0%) of the 3,234 records dwarf classes tied more directly to metering hardware, such as G01F flow/level/volume measuring (4.3%) and G05B control and regulating systems (4.1%). Records can carry multiple IPC classes, so these shares add up to more than 100%.
Shares are the percentage of the 3,234 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
Go deeper on Smart Water & Utility Infrastructure: Smart Water Meter Patent Landscape with Eureka
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Try EurekaA representative claim and the most-cited prior art
US20190332990A1 — Business Method for Reimbursing Costs Associated with Installing Advanced Water Metering Technology
A business method of reimbursing water meter companies for the costs involved in installing smart or advanced water meters. The method includes that the water meter company negotiates with water municipalities/utilities to become responsible for the water use billing operations. Some smart water meters can alert property owners and users of leak conditions, addressable by remote or automated water control, and can include consumable or non-consumable water quality sensors whose replacement is managed by the water company.Filed by Klicpera, Michael Edward; published 2019-10-31.
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | US20140266669A1 | Devices, methods, and associated information processing for security in a smart-sensored home | 1,283 |
| 2 | US20150156031A1 | Environmental sensing with a doorbell at a smart-home | 800 |
| 3 | US20150061859A1 | Security scoring in a smart-sensored home | 706 |
| 4 | US20150100167A1 | Smart-home control system providing HVAC system dependent responses to hazard detection events | 382 |
| 5 | US20170108236A1 | Environment control system | 374 |
| 6 | US20160260135A1 | Privacy-aware personalized content for the smart home | 340 |
| 7 | US20160261425A1 | Methods and apparatus for using smart environment devices via application program interfaces | 323 |
| 8 | US20150287310A1 | Smart hazard detector drills | 323 |
| 9 | US20150109104A1 | Smart invitation handling at a smart-home | 297 |
| 10 | US20150156030A1 | Handling specific visitor behavior at an entryway to a smart-home | 290 |
Citation counts favour older records simply because they have had longer to accumulate citations inside the searched corpus; treat them as a signal of influence rather than current relevance.
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Three patterns in the dataset matter more than any single ranking: where claim density already sits, where filing has cooled, and where the record shows collaboration rather than competition.
The field has a dominant core, not an even spread
Five assignees account for three-quarters of all records in scope, with the leader alone holding 1,789 filings. A newcomer filing broad connectivity or transmission claims in this space is filing directly into occupied ground.
Claims skew toward wireless transport, not sensing
H04W wireless communication networks cover more than half of records, while G01F flow/level/volume measuring — the class closest to the metering sensor itself — covers under 5%. Dense filing in wireless framing does not mean the metrology side is equally crowded.
Filing has pulled back from its 2021 peak
Annual filings fell 41% from the 2021 peak of 642 to 381 in 2024, the last year that can be treated as complete. Recent-year figures for individual leading assignees show sharp year-on-year drops, consistent with a broader cooling rather than one firm withdrawing.
Co-filing is rare and concentrated in one pairing
Only ten co-assignee pairs appear in the dataset, and the strongest of them links two of the largest filers, with a count well ahead of the next pairings. Most activity in this field is filed independently rather than jointly.
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to smart water & utility infrastructure: smart water meter patent landscape, with the prior art for and against each one.
Where to take this analysis
The dataset points to two immediate questions for a team evaluating this space: whether to file into the wireless-transmission core or the comparatively open metrology branches, and which specific claims from the leading assignees would need to be designed around.
Check claim scope against the leading assignees
With 75.0% of records held by five assignees, a freedom-to-operate check against their specific claim language is more useful than a general prior-art search.
Explore assignee claims in EurekaTest the under-claimed branches
Flow-measurement and water-quality-sensing classes carry far lower record shares than wireless classes, suggesting room for claims that are not primarily transport-layer.
Run a white space search in EurekaCommon questions about smart water meter patents
The assignee ranking in this dataset is heavily concentrated: the leading assignee alone holds 1,789 of the 3,234 records in scope, and the top five assignees combined account for 75.0% of all records. This is a much steeper drop-off than in many technology fields, where the leader typically holds a smaller share of the total. Anyone assessing freedom to operate should treat the top few assignees' claim language as the priority, since the long tail beyond the top 10 holds only 20.2% of records between them.
Based on IPC classification, mostly connectivity. H04W (wireless communication networks) covers 57.3% of the 3,234 records and H04L (digital information transmission) covers 37.0%, while G01F (flow, level and volume measuring) — the class closest to the metering sensor itself — covers only 4.3%. This means most patent claims in this space describe how meter data is transmitted and processed rather than how water flow is physically sensed, which has implications for where genuine white space sits.
Filing activity peaked at 642 records in 2021 and had declined to 381 by 2024, a 41% drop over that span, which is the last year in this dataset that can be read as a complete year. Records for 2025 and 2026 are still incomplete because publication typically lags the actual filing date by roughly 18 months, so it would be premature to call this a continued or accelerating decline. The honest read is that filing cooled from its 2021 peak, with the most recent trajectory still uncertain.
US20190332990A1, filed by Klicpera, Michael Edward and published 2019-10-31, describes a business method for reimbursing water meter companies for the costs of installing smart or advanced water meters, including utility billing arrangements, leak-condition alerting, and management of consumable or non-consumable water-quality sensor replacement. It is a business-method-style filing rather than a hardware or protocol claim, so it primarily affects billing and installation-cost-recovery models rather than the sensing or transmission technology itself. Teams building metering hardware or communication protocols should check it, but it is not a blocking reference for core metrology claims.
The clearest signal in this dataset is the gap between the dense wireless and transmission classes (H04W at 57.3%, H04L at 37.0% of records) and the comparatively light metrology-adjacent classes such as G01F flow measuring at 4.3% and G05B control and regulating systems at 4.1%. That gap suggests claims tied directly to sensor design, in-line water-quality sensing, or leak-triggered valve control mechanisms are less crowded than claims framed around wireless connectivity. High density in the wireless classes reflects occupied claim space, not necessarily a mature or exhausted technology.
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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.