Temperature & Thermal Sensors Patents: Leaders, Trends & White Space 2026
Temperature and thermal sensor patents: who holds the claims and where the field is still open
6.1% concentration at the top. The five leading assignees hold just 2,586 of 42,188 records in scope — a genuinely long tail, not a two-player race. Filings peaked at 1,168 records in 2017. From 2021 (1,019) to 2024 (662) — the most recent year that can be treated as complete — the total fell 35%. Publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, so 2025 and 2026 figures are still filling in and should not be read as a continuing decline.
- 1META PLATFORMS TECHNOLOGIES LLC1.5%
- 2DEKA PRODUCTS LP1.5%
- 3QUALCOMM INC1.1%
- 4DEXCOM INC1.1%
- 5INTEL CORP1.0%
See the full temperature & thermal sensors patent landscape 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 temperature and thermal sensor patents
Who holds the most patents in temperature and thermal sensing?
The leading assignee in this dataset holds 647 of the 42,188 records in scope, with the fifth-ranked filer at 409 and the tenth at 291. That gradual taper, rather than a sharp cliff after the leader, means no single company controls the field outright. The top five assignees combined account for only 6.1% of all records, and the top ten reach 9.9%, so most of the landscape is held by a long tail of smaller filers.
Is the number of temperature sensor patent filings growing or shrinking?
Filings peaked in 2017 at 1,168 records and have eased since; the most recent complete comparison shows a 35% decline from 1,019 records in 2021 to 662 in 2024. Figures for 2025 and 2026 are still low, but that reflects publication lag of roughly 18 months rather than a genuine collapse in filing activity. Treat any conclusion about the very latest years with caution until those cohorts finish publishing.
What patent classes cover temperature sensor technology?
The core classification is G01K (temperature measurement), which covers 5.3% of the 42,188 records in scope, but it is not the largest class touching this field. A61B (diagnosis and surgery) leads at 8.1%, and G01N (material analysis and testing) follows at 5.6%, reflecting how often temperature sensing is claimed as a supporting element of a medical or analytical system rather than as a standalone invention. Because records can carry multiple IPC codes, these percentages overlap rather than sum to a total.
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 Temperature & Thermal Sensors Patent Landscape covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-08-31. 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.