The ranking in this dataset covers 29 companies, with the leading assignee holding 8 of the 50 records in scope. The field is concentrated: the five most active filers together account for 60.0% of all records, and the ten most active account for 84.0%. That leaves a long tail of companies with only one or two filings each, so a new entrant is competing against a small group of established filers rather than a fragmented field.

Filing activity rose from 0 in 2017 to a peak of 8 in 2021, then fell to 0 by 2024, a -100% change over that three-year span. Because patent publication typically lags filing by around 18 months, the 2025 and 2026 figures in any dataset are still incomplete and should not be read as evidence of continued decline. The safest statement supported by complete-year data is that activity has pulled back sharply from its 2021 peak.

IEC 61850 defines the data models and configuration description language used across substation automation systems, and patent claims in this space typically protect specific implementations around that standard rather than the standard itself: how configuration files are versioned, how engineering tool chains map data models, and how conformance testing or vendor interoperability is verified. In this dataset, communications-related IPC classes such as H04L appear in 60.0% of records, more than grid-hardware class H02J at 18.0%, which reflects that emphasis on data and communication mechanisms.