Surge Protection Patents: Who Leads, Where the Gaps Are 2026
Surge Protection and Lightning Immunity Patents
Concentration is real but shallow: the ranked leader holds 127 records, yet the top 5 assignees together account for only 19.9% of all 2,225 records in scope — most of the field sits with a long tail. Filings ran at 127 in 2017 and peaked at 131 in 2023 before easing to 60 by 2024, a complete year showing a 43% pullback from the 106 filed in 2021. 2025 and 2026 figures (down to 5 in 2026) are still incomplete because of publication lag and should not be read as the trend's true endpoint.
- 1RIPD IP DEVELOPMENT LTD5.7%
- 2HUBBELL INC5.4%
- 3BOWTHORPE INDS3.1%
- 4COOPER IND INC3.0%
- 5DEHN SOHNE GMBH CO KG2.7%
See the full surge protection and lightning immunity 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 this landscape
Who holds the most surge protection and lightning immunity patents?
The dataset’s assignee ranking covers 100 companies, and the leading assignee holds 127 records, with fifth place at 61 and tenth place at 49. The top 5 assignees combined account for 19.9% of all 2,225 records in scope, and the top 10 for 32.2% — meaningful concentration at the very top, but the majority of records belong to a long tail of smaller filers. A freedom-to-operate review should not stop at the largest names.
Is patent filing in surge protection technology increasing or declining?
Filings peaked at 131 in 2023 after running around 106-127 per year earlier in the period, then eased to 60 by 2024, a complete and comparable year showing a 43% drop from 2021. Figures for 2025 and 2026 look lower still, but publication typically lags filing by about 18 months, so those recent years are undercounted and should not be read as a continuing decline. The honest read is a post-2023 pullback of uncertain slope, not a confirmed multi-year collapse.
What technology areas dominate surge protection patent claims?
Resistor technology (IPC class H01C) and protective circuit arrangements (H02H) each appear in roughly 40% of the 2,225 records, making them the densest claim territory, with spark gap and arc devices (H01T) close behind at 29.7%. Switches and relays (H01H) sit at 14.3%, and measurement, power supply/grid, connectors and power conversion classes each fall under 5%. Because a single record can carry multiple IPC classes, these shares add up to more than 100% and should be read individually against the full record count, not against each other as parts of a whole.
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 Protection and Lightning Immunity 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.