CPC technology class · G04

G04C — Electromechanical Clocks OR Watches

Electromechanical clocks or watches. 1,040 US utility patents granted 2015–2025, with the leading assignees and year-by-year filing trajectory.

1,040
US patents granted
G04
Parent CPC class
20
Active assignees
+12%
5-yr velocity
Top assignee: SEIKO EPSON CORPORATION (147 patents)

CPC subclass G04C — ELECTROMECHANICAL CLOCKS OR WATCHES — covers 1,040 US utility patents granted between 2015 and 2025 according to USPTO PatentsView records. This subclass sits within the broader CPC class G04 (HOROLOGY), one of roughly 250 top-level technology categories in the Cooperative Patent Classification system jointly maintained by the USPTO and the European Patent Office. At the subclass level, four-character codes like G04C give the most practical resolution for tracking a specific technology domain without losing sight of adjacent filings. Every grant here has been classified by a USPTO examiner based on the technical disclosure in the patent specification.

The competitive landscape in G04C is shaped by 20 distinct companies actively filing in this space. SEIKO EPSON CORPORATION leads with 147 patents, followed by CASIO COMPUTER CO., LTD. at 1,949 grants and ETA SA MANUFACTURE HORLOGÈRE SUISSE at 302. Concentration at the top of the leaderboard indicates whether this technology area is dominated by a handful of incumbents or fragmented across many filers — a useful signal for investors evaluating competitive moats and for product teams mapping freedom-to-operate risk.

Filing trajectory matters as much as static counts. The yearly series on this page plots grants from 2015 through 2025, highlighting whether innovation in G04C is accelerating, plateauing, or cooling. Technology areas with rising post-2020 activity often reflect emerging markets or new platform shifts, while declining filings can signal mature domains where incremental improvement has slowed. Researchers, licensing professionals, and competitive-intelligence teams use these patterns — together with the top-assignee distribution — to decide where to invest, where to license, and where to avoid entanglement. All counts on this page come directly from USPTO PatentsView and reflect US granted utility patents only.

Is G04C innovation accelerating?

US utility-patent grants per year in G04C, 2015–2025 — recent five years are up 12% versus 2015–2019.

406080100120140 20152016201720182019202020212022202320242025 53

Who leads G04C?

The 12 most active assignees in ELECTROMECHANICAL CLOCKS OR WATCHES — wider bars mean more grants

patents

What this shows Seiko Epson is the most active filer in G04C, holding 147 of the 1,040 patents in this class. Concentration at the top signals how contestable this technology area is for new entrants.

Source USPTO PatentsView — granted utility patents As of 2015–2025 grant years
View data table

About This Class

CPC subclass G04C belongs to class G04.

1,040 patents were granted in this class between 2015 and 2025.

20 companies actively patent in this space.

Classification System

Cooperative Patent Classification (CPC) is a hierarchical patent classification system used by the USPTO and EPO.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is CPC class G04C?
CPC subclass G04C covers ELECTROMECHANICAL CLOCKS OR WATCHES. It belongs to CPC class G04 (HOROLOGY). The Cooperative Patent Classification is a hierarchical system used by the USPTO and European Patent Office to categorize patents by technology.
How many patents have been filed in G04C?
1,040 US utility patents were granted in CPC subclass G04C between 2015 and 2025, based on USPTO PatentsView data.
Which company holds the most patents in G04C?
SEIKO EPSON CORPORATION leads G04C with 147 patents, making it the most active assignee in this technology area.
How is patent data for G04C collected?
Patent data comes from USPTO PatentsView, a public research dataset maintained by the United States Patent and Trademark Office. It covers all US granted utility patents and assigns CPC codes based on the technology described in each patent.
What is the difference between CPC class and subclass?
A CPC class (e.g., G04) is a broad technology category. Subclasses like G04C provide finer granularity within that category. PlainPatent organizes data at the subclass level (4-character codes) for the most useful view of technology domains.

Learn More

Explore the patent dataset

Data sourced from USPTO PatentsView — official U.S. government patent data. See our methodology for computation details. Retrieved and formatted by PlainPatent Editorial