Voice Coil Motor Actuator Patents: Who Leads, Where the Gaps Are 2026
- 85.9% concentrated. The top five assignees hold 55 of 64 records in scope — a field with almost no room for a new entrant to file broad, unblocked claims.
- Ten filers cover everything. The ranked leaders' top ten account for 100.0% of all 64 records; the entire documented activity sits with a small, closed set of companies.
- Filing has cooled since the 2017 peak. Volume ran from 15 records in 2017 down to a 2021→2024 span of 2 to 1 records, a -50% move over that three-year window.
Filing growth compares 2021 (2 records) with 2024 (1) — a three-year span. 2024 is the most recent year we treat as complete: publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, so 2025 onwards are still filling in and any growth rate that ends there would understate the field. Top-5 share is the combined record count of the five largest assignees divided by all 64 records in scope (CR5), not by the ranked leaders only.
What this dataset covers
This landscape draws on 64 published records matching voice coil motor and camera autofocus actuator claims, filtered to documents that address stroke, tilt, hysteresis, settling time, shock resistance, power consumption or closed-loop position control in their claims or description. Coverage runs from 2015 through the 2026-07-31 cut-off, with the most recent year necessarily partial — publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, so 2025 and 2026 counts will keep rising as more records surface.
The scope favours mechanical and control-side actuator claims over pure image-sensor or lens-optics filings, which is why pictorial-communication and optical-element IPC classes dominate the composition even though the underlying invention is a mechanical positioning device.
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Filing trends and technology composition
Two views of the same 64-record set: how filing volume moved year over year, and which IPC subclasses the claims actually sit in.
Filing trend, 2017 peak to present
Filings peaked at 15 records in 2017 and have since thinned; the 2021-to-2024 span shows a -50% move (2 records to 1), the most recent period that can be read as complete given publication lag.
Where the claims sit
H04N (pictorial communication) and G02B (optical elements) each cover more than half of all 64 records, with G03B (photographic apparatus) close behind; H02K (electric motors) sits under a third. Records commonly carry more than one class, so these shares add to well over 100%.
Shares are the percentage of the 64 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
Go deeper on Voice Coil Motor Autofocus Actuators with Eureka
This page is one run against one query. Ask Eureka your own question about voice coil motor autofocus actuators and every answer comes back with the patent numbers behind it.
Try EurekaRepresentative filing and most-cited prior art
GB2444830A — Voice coil motor actuator with bent bobbin suspension wires
A substantially square voice coil motor actuator for a mobile device combines a coil, magnets, a bobbin or driving unit, and a bobbin holder arranged so the driving unit sits inside the holder without side contact. A pair of suspension wires wraps the bobbin with a bend matched to diagonally opposite corners, fixed at one end of the bobbin's central hollow section, while elastic biasing support plates are fitted at the other end.Filed by Samsung Electro-Mechanics, published 2008-06-18 — predates most of the dataset and illustrates the bent-wire suspension approach that recurs across later filings.
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | US20130070148A1 | Camera module | 37 |
| 2 | US20170324906A1 | Dual camera module and method for controlling the same | 34 |
| 3 | US8995241B1 | Apparatus for driving voice coil motor actuator | 34 |
| 4 | WO2011078614A2 | Camera module | 34 |
| 5 | US20110058093A1 | Auto focusing method using VCM actuator | 33 |
| 6 | US6310749B1 | Voice coil motor actuator vibration isolator | 30 |
| 7 | US20040114270A1 | Settling servo control method and apparatus for hard disc drive and method and apparatus for estimating accel… | 24 |
| 8 | US10302456B1 | Position sensor configuration with bias field offset compensation | 20 |
| 9 | KR1020070047992A | Voice coil motor actuator and tilt compensating methodtherefore | 17 |
| 10 | US20170264814A1 | Apparatus and method for controlling auto focus of camera module | 14 |
Citation counts reflect influence inside this searched corpus and skew toward older filings; they are not a measure of current commercial relevance.
Each row carries its publication number; clicking a row searches Eureka by that number.
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Browse MCP servers →What the concentration and trend data mean for filing strategy
The numbers point to a field where broad mechanical claims are largely spoken for, and where the open ground is in control-side and measurement-adjacent classes rather than the core actuator mechanism.
A closed leadership group
Five assignees hold 55 of the 64 records in scope, and the ranked top ten account for all of them. A new entrant filing a broad voice-coil actuator claim is filing directly over occupied ground, not into open space.
Cooling since the 2017 peak
Filing volume peaked at 15 records in 2017 and has thinned since; the 2021-to-2024 window (2 records down to 1) is the last span not distorted by publication lag, and it points down rather than up.
Motor-class claims are the minority
Under a third of records touch H02K electric-motor classification directly, while H04N and G02B — pictorial communication and optical systems — dominate. Actuator mechanics get claimed largely through the imaging system around them.
Influence sits with older filings
The most-cited records in this corpus date from earlier in the window, which is typical of citation counts inside a searched set — they mark historical influence, not which claims matter today.
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to voice coil motor autofocus actuators, with the prior art for and against each one.
Who holds the claim space, and where it is thin
Sixteen companies make up the entire ranked field for this search. Activity is heavily skewed toward a handful of consumer-electronics and component makers, with a long tail of single- or few-filing entrants.
One filer well ahead of the pack
The leading assignee holds 17 records against a fifth-place figure of 4 and a tenth-place figure of 1 — a steep drop-off that marks this as a leader-and-long-tail structure rather than an evenly split field.
Limited cross-filing
Only three co-assignee pairs appear across the dataset, the strongest linking LG Innotek with an individual inventor-assignee. Most records are filed by a single entity, suggesting internal R&D rather than joint development is the norm here.
No leader shows recent-year activity
Every major assignee tracked shows zero filings in the latest year in the data — consistent with the overall cooling trend and with publication lag masking genuine recent activity rather than signalling withdrawal from the space.
| Assignee | Recent year | YoY |
|---|---|---|
| LG Electronics Inc. | 0 | — |
| Apple Inc. | 0 | — |
| LG Innotek Co., Ltd. | 0 | — |
| Samsung Electro-Mechanics Co., Ltd. | 0 | — |
| Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. | 0 | — |
| KIM CHANGHYUN | 0 | — |
| Seagate Technology LLC | 0 | — |
| International Business Machines Corporation | 0 | — |
Where to take this next
The dataset points to specific next steps depending on whether the goal is freedom-to-operate, competitive tracking or identifying open claim space.
Check freedom-to-operate against the leading five
With 85.9% of records held by five assignees, any new actuator mechanism claim should be checked against their granted claims first, not the field as a whole.
Run a freedom-to-operate searchTrack the control-side classes
H02K, G01D and H02P together carry a smaller share of records than the imaging classes, and are worth monitoring for emerging filings as control-loop and power-consumption claims mature.
Set up class-level monitoringWatch for the next filing cycle
Because publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, the apparent 2021-2024 decline may not hold once 2025-2026 filings finish surfacing — revisit the trend in a future cut.
Explore trend data in EurekaCommon questions about voice coil motor actuator patents
This dataset's ranked leader holds 17 of the 64 records in scope, with the top five assignees together accounting for 85.9% of all records. The field then drops off steeply — fifth place holds 4 records and tenth place holds just 1 — so ownership is concentrated in a small group of consumer-electronics and component manufacturers rather than spread evenly. Anyone assessing freedom-to-operate in this space should start with that leading group before looking further down the ranking.
Not on the evidence here. Filing peaked at 15 records in 2017, and the last span that can be treated as a complete-year comparison, 2021 to 2024, shows a -50% move from 2 records down to 1. Because publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, the 2025-2026 figures in the data are still filling in and should not yet be read as confirmation of continued decline, but the trend through 2024 is downward.
Pictorial communication (H04N) and optical elements (G02B) are the two largest IPC classes, covering 64.1% and 59.4% of the 64 records respectively, with photographic apparatus (G03B) close behind at 43.8%. Electric motor classification (H02K) appears in only 28.1% of records. This means most actuator claims are framed as part of a camera or imaging system rather than as standalone electric-motor inventions, which matters for how a new filing should be classified and searched.
The thinner classes in this dataset are G01R (electric and magnetic measurement, 6.3% of records), G01D (general measuring and recording, 4.7%) and H02P (motor control, 4.7%). These map to closed-loop position sensing, hysteresis compensation and settling-time control circuitry — mechanically adjacent to the dominant actuator claims but far less densely claimed. A first claim in these areas would likely centre on a specific sensing or control-loop method rather than the actuator's physical construction, which is already heavily occupied.
GB2444830A, filed by Samsung Electro-Mechanics and published in 2008, claims a square voice coil motor actuator using a bent-wire suspension system with a pair of suspension wires bent to match diagonally opposite corners of the bobbin and holder. It is a representative early filing on physical suspension geometry rather than control electronics. Designs using different suspension geometries, such as leaf-spring or four-wire straight suspensions, or that focus on closed-loop control rather than mechanical suspension, sit outside its specific claim scope, though a full clearance search against its granted claims is still the safe course before filing.
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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.