Switchgears include electrical disconnect switches, fuses or circuit breakers used to control, protect and isolate electrical equipment. The number of new patent applications filed per year has almost doubled in the last 5 years and so we decided to analyse the innovation in this area for all records published globally in the last 20 years.

We conducted a broad search using keywords and all relevant IPC codes in PatSeer and then moved to categorize and analyze the data within PatSeer Project.

Some of the insights the came up from the analysis were:

• Vacuum switchgears have seen maximum patenting activity with Hitachi holding maximum number of patents in this area.
• Research and new filings  in China practically doubled after 2009 and the number of new applications filed in the 2010-2014 period is 4.5 times more than its nearest rival Japan.
• Metal enclosed type of construction is widely preferred by top companies with ABB having maximum number of records.

The full report can be accessed below: