Surge Arrester Patents: Who Leads, Where the Gaps Are 2026
Surge arrester patents for power systems: filing trends and where the field is still open
23.1% of all activity sits with just five assignees, out of 286 records in scope — concentrated at the top with a long tail of single-filing entrants below. Filings peaked at 21 in 2017 and the 2021-to-2024 window shows a -33% move (9 down to 6). Because publication trails filing by roughly 18 months, 2025 and 2026 counts are undercounted rather than genuinely low — treat the recent downturn as provisional.
- 1KK TOSHIBA16
- 2BOWTHORPE INDS14
- 3RIPD RESEARCH AND IP DEVELOPMENT LTD13
- 4ABB RES LTD12
- 5HUBBELL INC11
See the full surge arresters for power systems analysis in Eureka
- The complete ranking, not just the top five
- Every IPC branch with its share of the corpus
- The most-cited records, and where claim space is still thin
Common questions about surge arrester patents
Who holds the most surge arrester patents for power systems?
Across the 286 records in this dataset, the leading assignee holds 16 records, with the fifth-ranked assignee at 11 and the tenth at 10. The top five combined account for 23.1% of all 286 records, and the top ten for 40.9%, which means the field has a mild concentration at the top but no single company controls a dominant share. The remaining ranked assignees, roughly 90 of the 100 in the full ranking, each hold only one or two records, forming a long tail typical of a mature protective-device category.
Are surge arrester patent filings increasing or decreasing?
Filing peaked at 21 records in 2017 and has not returned to that level since. Looking only at the years treated as complete, filings fell from 9 in 2021 to 6 in 2024, a -33% change over that span. Counts for 2025 and 2026 are still artificially low because publication typically lags actual filing by about 18 months, so the most recent years should not yet be read as a continuing decline.
Which patent classes cover surge arrester technology?
The dataset’s records fall most heavily into H01C (resistors, 37.8% of 286 records) and H02H (protective circuit arrangements, 32.5%), reflecting the core varistor-and-protection-circuit design of most arresters. Supporting classes include H01T (spark gaps and arc devices, 16.8%), H01H (switches and relays, 14.3%), G01R (electric and magnetic measurement, 12.9%) and C04B (ceramics, 9.1%). Because a single record can carry multiple IPC classes, these shares add up to more than 100% and should not be summed as if they were mutually exclusive.
Disclaimer. This analysis is based on Patsnap Eureka data drawn from a limited snapshot of global patent records and is provided for general information and reference only. Patent data carries inherent limitations — recent filings are under-counted because of publication lag, counts may be on a record or family basis, classification and applicant-name data may contain errors or duplicates, and the underlying search query defines the scope shown — so the analysis may be incomplete or inaccurate and may not reflect the full technology landscape.
Nothing here is an exhaustive prior-art, novelty, freedom-to-operate or validity search, nor does it constitute legal, financial or professional advice, and it should not be relied upon as such. Verify independently and review with qualified patent and legal professionals before acting on it.
Method: Filing trend and technology composition. Derived from a Patsnap search on Surge Arresters for Power Systems covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-07-31. Counts reflect published records only and shift as new filings publish. Every share divides by all records in scope. Data: Patsnap Eureka. See the full landscape report.