Leading owners of wearables patents worldwide 2012-2021

As of December 2021, Samsung was the biggest owner of active patents in the field of wearables. The company owned over 4,088 patent families, which is over 2,000 patent families more than the runner-up. Sony owned the second most active families and Microsoft the third most. In 2020, Sony surpassed Microsoft. Samsung has been the leading company by the number of active patent families for close to seven years due to the exceptional growth of its portfolio which started in 2014. The statistic is based on data provided by PatentSight.

Largest patent owners in wearables worldwide from 2012 to 2021, by number of active patent families

Reporting Date	Samsung	Sony	Microsoft	Alphabet	LG Electronics	Meta	Apple	Philips	Huawei	Magic Leap
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Release date

June 2021

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Region

Worldwide

Survey time period

2012 to December 31, 2021

Supplementary notes

* A patent family is defined as a group of patent documents all of which have the same set of priorities. I.e., it is a group of patent documents that protect the same invention across authorities.

The owner of a patent includes all patents owned by a company and its subsidiaries (by at least 50%) based on comprehensive research on corporate structures, M&A, Spin-offs, company names changes, patent transactions. PatentSight also tracks former names of companies and subsidiaries, ongoing mergers and acquisitions, acquisitions of the past, reassignments, companies that have the same applicant, and transliterations by patent offices.

Technology field definition by Swiss Federal Institute of Intellectual Property – ip-search: "Wearables in general are smart electronic devices worn on the body, such as smart watches, body worn or body immersed sensors, video goggles, head-up-displays and virtual reality devices. The devices are most often used for virtual and augmented reality (smart glasses); for measuring, recording and tracking medical parameters on humans or for sensing and guiding exercises (smart watches, activity trackers) etc. Handheld devices, such as smartphones, are also considered as being a wearable, if they are of a wristwatch type. General smartphones are not covered by this field."

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