Steer-by-Wire Patents: Who Leads, Where the Gaps Are 2026
- Concentration is modest at the top. the leader holds 303 records and the ranked top 5 combine for just 12.6% of all 9,410 records in scope, so this is not a field locked up by one filer.
- Filing has plateaued, not grown. activity peaked at 558 records in 2022 and the 2017 figure of 553 sits close behind, with recent-year momentum for several leading assignees down 86-100% year over year.
- Steering hardware, not the safety logic, dominates the classification. B62D covers 42.8% of records while the largest control-and-diagnostics classes each sit under 8%, pointing to where claim space is still open.
What this landscape covers
Steer-by-wire removes the mechanical column between the wheel and the road, which means every fault-tolerance decision — sensor voting, MCU redundancy, fallback authority, latency budgets for handing control back to a driver — has to be proven in the patent claim itself rather than assumed from a physical linkage. This dataset spans 9,410 published records filed between 2015 and mid-2026 that combine steering actuation terms with functional-safety and redundancy language in the claims.
Because publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, the 2026 figure in the trend chart is necessarily incomplete and should be read as a partial year, not a drop-off.
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Filing trend and technology composition
Two views of the same 9,410-record corpus: how filing volume has moved year over year, and which IPC subclasses the claims actually sit in.
A plateau, not a growth curve
Filings ran at 553 in 2017, climbed to a peak of 558 in 2022, and have declined since toward 40 in the partial 2026 count. Read against the midpoint year, the trend is flat to declining rather than an emerging-technology ramp — this looks like a field where the core architectural claims were staked out early and later filing is incremental.
Steering mechanics still anchor the classification
B62D (motor vehicles & steering) appears on 42.8% of the 9,410 records, far ahead of any control or sensing subclass. G05D, B60W, G01S and B60T each sit in the mid single digits to under 8%, and A61B and E21B appear too — a reminder that some fault-tolerant actuation and sensor-voting language originates in adjacent domains like surgical robotics and drilling equipment rather than passenger vehicles.
Shares are the percentage of the 9,410 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
Go deeper on Steer-by-Wire Fault Tolerant Architecture with Eureka
This page is one run against one query. Ask Eureka your own question about steer-by-wire fault tolerant architecture and every answer comes back with the patent numbers behind it.
Try EurekaA representative claim and the most-cited prior art
System and method for fail-safe operation for angle sensors in steer-by-wire system
A fail-safe structure for angle sensors in a Steer-by-Wire (SbW) system may include first and second angle sensors configured to sense a steering angle of a steering wheel associated with a steering feedback actuator assembly, a first MCU configured to receive a first angle signal from the first angle sensor, a second MCU configured to receive a second angle signal from the second angle sensor, and a motor position sensor configured to sense a position of a motor associated with the steering feedback actuator assembly. The first MCU may be configured to, if the first angle signal and the second angle signal do not match each other, receive a motor position signal associated with the position.Filed by HL Mando Corporation, published 2024-05-02 as US20240140521A1.
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | US6846308B2 | Electro-mechanical surgical device | 2,570 |
| 2 | US6793652B1 | Electro-mechanical surgical device | 2,524 |
| 3 | US6981941B2 | Electro-mechanical surgical device | 2,515 |
| 4 | US6849071B2 | Electro-mechanical surgical device | 2,236 |
| 5 | US6846309B2 | Electro-mechanical surgical device | 2,211 |
| 6 | US6846307B2 | Electro-mechanical surgical device | 1,915 |
| 7 | US8357144B2 | Electro-mechanical surgical device | 1,830 |
| 8 | US5948030A | Steering angle determaination method and apparatus | 1,503 |
| 9 | WO2003000138A2 | Electro-mechanical surgical device with data memory unit | 1,081 |
| 10 | WO2002043571A2 | Electro-mechanical surgical device | 909 |
High citation counts here concentrate in older electro-mechanical surgical device patents, which is a signal of general influence on redundant actuation claim drafting, not a signal of current steer-by-wire activity.
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Browse MCP servers →What the numbers mean for a filing decision
Three patterns worth acting on before drafting a new claim in this space.
No single filer controls the field
The leader holds 303 records and the ranked top 5 together account for 12.6% of all 9,410 records in scope. That leaves the large majority of filings spread across a long tail, which means freedom-to-operate risk is more about specific claim overlap than about avoiding one dominant assignee.
Activity has cooled since the 2022 peak
Filing volume peaked at 558 records in 2022 and has fallen since, with several leading assignees showing year-over-year declines of 86% to 100% in the latest recorded year. Combined with the 18-month publication lag, this looks like consolidation around established architectures rather than a still-accelerating technology.
Mechanical steering claims still dominate
B62D covers 42.8% of records, well ahead of control (G05D, 7.7%), joint vehicle control (B60W, 6.7%) and positioning (G01S, 4.5%). Fault-tolerance and redundancy language is layered onto steering-mechanism claims more often than it is claimed as a standalone control architecture.
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to steer-by-wire fault tolerant architecture, with the prior art for and against each one.
| Assignee | Co-assignee | Shared families |
|---|---|---|
| ThyssenKrupp Presta AG | ThyssenKrupp AG | 103 |
| Honda Motor Co., Ltd. | ThyssenKrupp Presta AG | 55 |
| Toyota Jidosha Kabushiki Kaisha (Toyota Motor Corporation) | JTEKT Corporation | 36 |
| JTEKT Corporation | Denso Corporation | 20 |
| Toyota Jidosha Kabushiki Kaisha (Toyota Motor Corporation) | Denso Corporation | 17 |
| Deere & Company | BONEFAS ZACHARY T | 16 |
| Toyota Jidosha Kabushiki Kaisha (Toyota Motor Corporation) | Toyota Motor Corporation | 15 |
| Toyota Jidosha Kabushiki Kaisha (Toyota Motor Corporation) | Aisin Seiki Co., Ltd. | 13 |
Ten co-assignee pairs appear in the data; the strongest pairing recurs 103 times, suggesting a small number of long-running joint development programmes between steering-system suppliers and their OEM or parent partners rather than broad industry-wide co-filing.
Who is filing, and where momentum has gone quiet
The ranked leaders span OEMs, steering-system suppliers and off-highway equipment makers, but recent-year filing counts for several of them have dropped sharply.
A moderate lead, not a lock
The top-ranked assignee holds 303 records against a fifth-place figure of 194 and a tenth-place figure of 142 — a gradual taper rather than a cliff, consistent with several large automotive and steering-supplier portfolios competing at similar scale.
Recent filing activity has slowed across leaders
Multiple assignees near the top of the ranking show year-over-year declines of 86% to 100% in the most recent year, with some recording zero filings. Given the publication lag, part of this reflects reporting delay, but the multi-year plateau in the trend chart suggests a genuine cooling as well.
US and EPO dominate the filing venues
The United States receives the largest share of filings at 3,921, followed by Europe (EPO) at 1,568 and WIPO/PCT at 837, with Germany and the UK each in the low hundreds. This points to a filing strategy centred on the largest automotive markets rather than broad global coverage.
| Assignee | Recent year | YoY |
|---|---|---|
| Ford Global Technologies, LLC | 1 | -90% |
| Crown Equipment Corporation | 1 | -86% |
| Honda Motor Co., Ltd. | 0 | -100% |
| Toyota Jidosha Kabushiki Kaisha (Toyota Motor Corporation) | 0 | -100% |
| Nissan Motor Co., Ltd. | 0 | — |
| Deere & Company | 0 | — |
| ThyssenKrupp Presta AG | 0 | -100% |
| JTEKT Corporation | 0 | -100% |
Where to take this analysis
The dataset points to specific next steps depending on whether the goal is freedom-to-operate, white space scouting, or tracking a competitor.
Map claim overlap against the ranked leaders
With no single assignee holding more than a modest share of the field, a freedom-to-operate review needs to check claim language against several mid-ranked filers, not just the top name.
Run a claim comparison in EurekaTrack the under-claimed control branches
Latency-budget arbitration and degraded-mode road feel synthesis carry lighter filing density than the core steering-mechanism cluster, which makes them worth a fresh search before drafting.
Explore white space in EurekaWatch for renewed filing after the plateau
Filing peaked in 2022 and has since declined; a sudden uptick from a currently quiet assignee would be an early signal of a new architecture push.
Set up assignee monitoring in EurekaCommon questions about this landscape
In this dataset it means claims that address what happens when a sensor, actuator or control unit fails without a mechanical backup column to fall back on. That includes redundant sensor pairs with voting logic, dual or triple MCU arrangements, defined degradation modes that hand partial steering authority back to the driver, and latency budgets for how quickly a fallback must engage. The representative filing here, US20240140521A1 from HL Mando, is a concrete example: it claims a dual-sensor, dual-MCU angle-sensing structure with a defined fallback path when the two angle signals disagree.
The ranked leaders span major OEMs, dedicated steering-system suppliers, and off-highway equipment makers, with the top-ranked assignee holding 303 records. Concentration is moderate rather than extreme: the top 5 assignees combined account for only 12.6% of the 9,410 records in scope, so no single company controls the field. Several of the most active historical filers show sharply reduced filing counts in the most recent year, which is worth checking against publication lag before concluding they have exited the space.
Filing volume peaked at 558 records in 2022, close to the 553 filed in 2017, and has declined since toward a partial count of 40 in 2026. That pattern reads as a plateau rather than sustained growth, though the most recent one to two years are understated because publication typically lags filing by around 18 months. A clearer read on the current trajectory will only be possible once the 2025-2026 filings finish publishing.
B62D, covering motor vehicles and steering mechanisms generally, appears on 42.8% of the 9,410 records and anchors the classification. Control-oriented classes like G05D (7.7%) and B60W (6.7%), along with positioning class G01S (4.5%) and braking class B60T (4.3%), appear far less often, which suggests redundancy and fault-tolerance language is usually claimed as an attachment to a steering-mechanism claim rather than as a standalone control-system invention.
The classification data shows heavy density in core steering mechanics (B62D) but much lighter coverage in specific control-layer sub-areas such as latency-budget arbitration between redundant MCUs, degraded-mode road feel synthesis, and integrity-level partitioning across ECUs. These are technically distinct from the sensor-and-actuator hardware claims that dominate the corpus, and lighter filing density there does not mean the technology is immature — it means the claim space is less occupied and worth a targeted prior-art search before drafting.
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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.