5G & 6G Patents: Who Leads, Where the Gaps Are 2026
5G and 6G Patents: Who Holds the Radio Access Claims and Where the Field Is Still Open
Half the field in five hands. The top five assignees combine for 8,500 of 16,826 records in scope, 50.5% of everything filed. Annual records climbed from 405 in 2017 to a peak of 3,172 in 2022. The complete-year comparison shows a 37% decline from 2,818 in 2021 to 1,781 in 2024 — a real cooling after the standards-development surge, though 2025 and 2026 figures will revise upward as publications catch up.
- 1OFINNO LLC2,787
- 2LG ELECTRONICS INC1,727
- 3ZTE CORP1,471
- 4HUAWEI TECH CO LTD1,432
- 5APPLE INC1,083
See the full 5g & 6g patent landscape analysis in Eureka
- The complete ranking, not just the top five
- Every IPC branch with its share of the corpus
- The most-cited records, and where claim space is still thin
Common questions about the 5G and 6G patent landscape
Who holds the most 5G and 6G patents?
Filing in this dataset is concentrated at the top: the leading assignee holds 2,787 of the 16,826 records in scope, and the five leading assignees together hold 50.5% of all records. That level of concentration is typical of a standards-essential field where a small group of infrastructure and handset vendors filed early and kept filing continuations. Anyone assessing licensing exposure should start with those top five before looking at the long tail of 90 remaining ranked companies.
Is 5G and 6G patent filing still growing?
No — filings peaked at 3,172 records in 2022 and have since eased, with the only complete year-on-year comparison showing a 37% decline from 2,818 filings in 2021 to 1,781 in 2024. Because publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, the 2025 and 2026 figures in any trend chart will still revise upward, so it is premature to call the field closed. The realistic read is that the initial standards-development surge has passed its peak, not that new filing has stopped.
What technology areas dominate 5G and 6G patent claims?
Wireless communication networks, IPC class H04W, appear on 85.0% of the 16,826 records in scope, making it by far the dominant class. Digital information transmission (H04L) is a distant second at 34.4%, and general transmission (H04B) sits at 13.3%. Classes tied to positioning, AI-assisted radio management, general data processing, multiplexing and antenna design each remain under 3% of records, which marks them as comparatively open relative to the wireless-network core.
Disclaimer. This analysis is based on Patsnap Eureka data drawn from a limited snapshot of global patent records and is provided for general information and reference only. Patent data carries inherent limitations — recent filings are under-counted because of publication lag, counts may be on a record or family basis, classification and applicant-name data may contain errors or duplicates, and the underlying search query defines the scope shown — so the analysis may be incomplete or inaccurate and may not reflect the full technology landscape.
Nothing here is an exhaustive prior-art, novelty, freedom-to-operate or validity search, nor does it constitute legal, financial or professional advice, and it should not be relied upon as such. Verify independently and review with qualified patent and legal professionals before acting on it.
Method: Filing trend and technology composition. Derived from a Patsnap search on 5G & 6G Patent Landscape covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-08-31. Counts reflect published records only and shift as new filings publish. Every share divides by all records in scope. Data: Patsnap Eureka. See the full landscape report.