The document analyzes over 1,000 patent applications related to IoT smart home technologies, highlighting key players like Google and Samsung who dominate the patent landscape. Most patents focus on incremental innovations, with only 13% targeting potential new market products such as adaptable autonomous systems and AI applications. The analysis aims to identify 'white spaces' for further research and development in the smart home sector.

1. 1
©2015 TechIPm, LLC All Rights Reserved http://www.techipm.com/
IoT Smart Home Innovation White Space Insights from Patents
Alex G. Lee (alexglee@techipm.com)
https://www.linkedin.com/today/author/2853055
Many high tech business leaders are now competing in the IoT (Internet of Things) smart home market by
providing innovative products/services suchas Samsung SmartThings and Apple HomeKit. Patent information can
provide insights regarding the state of the art of the IoT innovations for smart home applications such as home
automation, energy/utility management, home security, lighting system and safety monitoring (e.g., hazard
detecting, elderly care). Thus, one can identify the potential further innovation R&D areas (“white space”) that can
lead to new products/services development through the patent analysis.
To find the white spaces in the IoT smart home applications, more than 1000 published patent applications and
issued patents in the USPTO as of November 10, 2015 that are related to the smart home applications are reviewed.
More 400 patent applications are selected as the key patents for the IoT smart home applications. In number of
patent applications, Google (including Nest Lab) and Samsung Electronics dominate the patent applications (nearly
30% of the total patent applications among more than 70 patent owners). Samsung Electronics patent application is
highly focused on the home automation. Google patent application is focused on the home automation
energy/utility management and safety monitoring.

2. 2
©2015 TechIPm, LLC All Rights Reserved http://www.techipm.com/

3. 3
©2015 TechIPm, LLC All Rights Reserved http://www.techipm.com/
Following figure shows the patent landscape of the IoT smart home applications. As can be seen in the figure, the
home automation is clouded by significant number of patent applications owned by many market leaders such as
Samsung Electronics, LG Electronics and General Electric. The energy/utility management is also clouded by a
large number of patent applications owned by several key market leaders such as Google and Honeywell.

4. 4
©2015 TechIPm, LLC All Rights Reserved http://www.techipm.com/

5. 5
©2015 TechIPm, LLC All Rights Reserved http://www.techipm.com/
In-depth analysis of each patent reviles that most of the patent applications are for the incremental innovations of
the current market products/services. 13% of the total patent applications are for the innovations of the potential
new market products/services: Adaptable Autonomous Smart Home System (The adaptable autonomous smart
home system can recognize the contextual or semantic profiling of a personor place or devices (physical
environment) based on sensed data by the IoT devices. The adaptable autonomous smart home system determines
particular interpretation instructions (define particular IoT device control rules) that are associated with the
particular physical environment and dynamically updates the control rules for changing physical environment);
Self-Aware Self-Healing Smart Home System; Artificial Intelligence including Deep Learning Applications;
Cloud/Big Data/SaaS; Robots;New UX for Smart Home System; Cross-industry Convergence; and Emotion-
Aware Smart Home System.

6. 6
©2015 TechIPm, LLC All Rights Reserved http://www.techipm.com/