Companies with the most autonomous driving patents in Japan 2020

* 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: "The technology field Autonomous Vehicles and Driving covers a variety of self guided or self steering vehicles and machines, including land, see or air traveling vehicles as well as robotic cleaner or drones. The common technical concept defining the field is the autonomous or automated character of the vehicles movement, achieved by computer software which is in intensive contact with sensors and measuring devices on board as well as in the surrounding to control, navigate, and drive the vehicle. Self-driving vehicles are cars or trucks in which human drivers are never required to take control to safely operate the vehicle. The technology field covers not only fully autonomous vehicles, but also many intermediate technologies such as adaptive cruise control, image recognition for driver assistance, driver behavior analysis or traffic control, if they refer to autonomous or automated vehicles."