Adaptive Streaming Patents: Who Leads, Where the Gaps Are 2026
- 36.7% concentration. The top five assignees alone account for 1,369 of 3,731 records in scope — over a third of the field sits with a handful of filers.
- Filing peaked in 2017. 434 records that year versus 9 in the still-filling 2026 count, with a confirmed -39% pull-back from 307 filings in 2021 to 188 in 2024.
- H04N and H04L dominate. 72.7% of records touch pictorial communication and 55.0% touch digital transmission classes — the buffer, bandwidth and manifest logic layers are heavily claimed.
Filing growth compares 2021 (307 records) with 2024 (188) — a three-year span. 2024 is the most recent year we treat as complete: publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, so 2025 onwards are still filling in and any growth rate that ends there would understate the field. Top-5 share is the combined record count of the five largest assignees divided by all 3,731 records in scope (CR5), not by the ranked leaders only.
What this landscape covers
This dataset tracks patent families filed against adaptive bitrate streaming, low-latency delivery and transport mechanics — buffer occupancy, bandwidth estimation, startup delay, rebuffering, manifest files and chunked transfer encoding — across 3,731 records published between 2015 and mid-2026. The scope spans both the video pipeline (segment encoding, manifest structure) and the network layer (rate adaptation, congestion response), which is why a single record frequently carries classes from more than one IPC subclass.
Filing activity crested in 2017 and has since retreated from that peak, though the two most recent years are undercounted because publication typically lags filing by roughly eighteen months. The confirmed decline — from 307 filings in 2021 to 188 in 2024 — describes a maturing claim landscape rather than a shrinking one; the underlying transport and buffering mechanics are well-trodden ground, and new activity is more likely to sit at the edges than in the core.
Filing trends and technology composition
Two views of the same 3,731 records: how filing volume has moved year over year, and which IPC subclasses carry the claim density.
A 2017 peak followed by a confirmed pull-back
Annual filings ran as high as 434 in 2017. The comparison the dataset supports without relying on lagging years is 2021 to 2024: filings fell from 307 to 188, a -39% move over three years. Treat 2025 and 2026 figures as provisional; they will revise upward as publications catch up with filing dates.
Video and transmission classes carry the weight
H04N (pictorial communication) appears on 72.7% of records and H04L (digital transmission) on 55.0% — together they frame the field as squarely about moving and rendering video over constrained links. G06F (data processing) trails at 14.4%, with wireless (H04W), storage (G11B), AI-based computing (G06N), image processing (G06T) and gaming (A63F) each present in low single digits. Because records can carry multiple classes, these shares sum past 100% of the 3,731 records in scope.
Shares are the percentage of the 3,731 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
Go deeper on Adaptive Streaming and Transport with Eureka
This page is one run against one query. Ask Eureka your own question about adaptive streaming and transport and every answer comes back with the patent numbers behind it.
Try EurekaThe most-cited records in this space
US10728305B2 — Adaptive bitrate streaming techniques
Filed by AT&T Intellectual Property, this patent covers determining a bitrate for a video segment from video buffer occupancy, requesting a chunk at that bitrate, and — if the chunk does not arrive within a threshold duration — requesting a second chunk, typically at a lower bitrate. It ties bitrate selection directly to a timeout mechanism rather than to bandwidth estimation alone.Granted 2020-07-28. Full claim scope should be checked against the current file wrapper before relying on this summary.
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | US20160337426A1 | System and Method for Streaming Content from Multiple Servers | 662 |
| 2 | US20110096828A1 | Enhanced block-request streaming using scalable encoding | 445 |
| 3 | US20110080940A1 | Low latency cacheable media streaming | 375 |
| 4 | US20140150019A1 | Method and system for ad insertion in over-the-top live media delivery | 372 |
| 5 | US20130097309A1 | Method and apparatus for carrier controlled dynamic rate adaptation and client playout rate reduction | 371 |
| 6 | US20130007223A1 | Enhanced block-request streaming system for handling low-latency streaming | 336 |
| 7 | US20110239078A1 | Enhanced block-request streaming using cooperative parallel HTTP and forward error correction | 327 |
| 8 | US20120265892A1 | Method and system for secure and reliable video streaming with rate adaptation | 322 |
| 9 | US20130091251A1 | Network streaming of media data | 284 |
| 10 | US20130246643A1 | Switch signaling methods providing improved switching between representations for adaptive HTTP streaming | 284 |
Citation counts accumulate over time, so older records are structurally favoured — read this as a map of influence on the field to date, not a ranking of current relevance.
Each row carries its publication number; clicking a row searches Eureka by that number.
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Three observations that follow directly from the filing and citation data, without extrapolating beyond it.
A third of the field sits with a handful of filers
Combined, the five leading assignees account for 1,369 of the 3,731 records in scope, and the top ten push that to 1,820 records (48.8%). New entrants filing on core buffer-occupancy or bandwidth-estimation claims are filing into territory already dense with prior art from a small set of incumbents.
Core claim activity has cooled from its peak
The 2017 high of 434 filings has not been revisited. The confirmed 2021-to-2024 decline suggests the foundational rate-adaptation and manifest mechanics are largely staked out, pushing new filing activity toward adjacent or combinatorial claims rather than the base mechanism.
The field is defined by video delivery, not by AI or storage
G06N (AI-based computing) touches only 1.9% of records and G11B (storage) 3.1%, despite streaming's obvious adjacency to both. That gap is a signal of where claim language has not yet caught up with where engineering effort is moving.
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to adaptive streaming and transport, with the prior art for and against each one.
Who is active, and where activity is cooling
The leading assignees combine telecom equipment makers, device and chipset vendors, and content/platform operators — a mix that reflects streaming's position at the intersection of network, device and service.
One filer holds a clear lead
The top-ranked assignee holds 389 records, more than double the fifth-place total of 146 — a gap wide enough that its portfolio functions as a reference point for freedom-to-operate checks in this space.
Even active filers are pulling back
Comcast Cable Communications still filed 4 records in the latest year but at a -67% year-on-year drop; Ericsson, Nokia Technologies, Adeia Guides and Canon each show zero filings in the latest year, several down -100% YoY. Momentum has shifted away from the historically dominant filers.
Co-filing is limited and concentrated
Only 10 co-assignee pairs appear in the dataset, the strongest being a Canon entity paired with Canon Europe, and Qualcomm paired with two individual named inventors. Cross-company joint filing is the exception here, not the norm.
| Assignee | Recent year | YoY |
|---|---|---|
| Comcast Cable Communications, LLC | 4 | -67% |
| Qualcomm Incorporated | 1 | — |
| Telefonaktiebolaget LM Ericsson (publ) | 0 | -100% |
| Nokia Technologies Oy | 0 | — |
| Adeia Guides Inc. | 0 | -100% |
| Canon Kabushiki Kaisha | 0 | -100% |
| Arris Enterprises LLC | 0 | -100% |
| Google LLC | 0 | -100% |
Where to take this
The dataset points to specific next steps depending on whether the goal is freedom-to-operate, portfolio strategy, or spotting open claim space.
Check freedom-to-operate against the leading portfolios
With 36.7% of records held by five assignees, any new filing on core rate-adaptation or buffer-occupancy claims should be checked against those portfolios first, not just the most-cited records.
Run a freedom-to-operate search in Eureka →Probe the under-claimed branches
AI-assisted bandwidth prediction and cloud-gaming-specific ABR sit at low single-digit IPC shares despite adjacent engineering activity — a plausible place to file before the space fills in.
Explore white space in Eureka →Track momentum, not just volume
Several historically dominant filers show flat or negative year-on-year activity; watch which assignees are still filing into 2025-2026 once the publication lag closes.
Monitor assignee activity in Eureka →Common questions on adaptive streaming patents
The ranking of 100 assignees in this dataset shows a clear leader with 389 records, more than double the fifth-place holder's 146. The top five assignees combined hold 1,369 of the 3,731 records in scope, or 36.7% of the field. That concentration means a small number of portfolios — spanning telecom equipment vendors, chipset makers and content platform operators — cover a disproportionate share of the core buffer, bandwidth and manifest claims.
No — filing peaked in 2017 at 434 records and has declined since. The clearest confirmed comparison is 2021 to 2024, where filings dropped from 307 to 188, a -39% move. The 2025 and 2026 counts in the raw data look even lower, but that reflects publication lag of roughly eighteen months rather than an actual collapse in filing activity, so those two years should not be read as evidence of a continuing decline.
US10728305B2, assigned to AT&T Intellectual Property, covers determining a video segment's bitrate from buffer occupancy, requesting a chunk at that bitrate, and requesting a second chunk — generally at a different bitrate — if the first does not arrive within a set time threshold. The mechanism is notable for tying bitrate adaptation to a timeout condition rather than purely to bandwidth estimation. Anyone implementing chunk-timeout-driven bitrate fallback should review the granted claims directly rather than relying on the abstract.
The IPC composition shows AI-based computing (G06N) present on only 1.9% of the 3,731 records and image data processing (G06T) on 1.4%, despite both being technically adjacent to streaming's bandwidth-estimation and rendering problems. Storage-aware segment caching (G11B at 3.1%) is similarly thin. These low shares, relative to the 72.7% and 55.0% carried by the core video and transmission classes, mark branches where claim language has not caught up with engineering practice.
H04N (pictorial communication, largely video/TV) and H04L (digital information transmission) dominate, appearing on 72.7% and 55.0% of the 3,731 records respectively. G06F (electric digital data processing) is a distant third at 14.4%. Because a single patent can carry multiple IPC classes, these percentages are shares of the whole record set rather than a strict partition, and they should be read as indicators of claim density rather than a mutually exclusive breakdown.
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Disclaimer. This page is generated from Patsnap Eureka data drawn from a limited snapshot of global patent and scientific-literature records, and is provided for general information and reference only.
Patent data carries inherent limitations: recent filings (typically the most recent 18–24 months) are under-counted due to standard publication lag; counts may be reported at either a patent-family or a patent-record basis and are not always directly comparable; classification, applicant-name, and citation data may contain errors, duplicates, or omissions; and the underlying search query defines and constrains the scope shown. As a result, the analysis may be incomplete or inaccurate and may not reflect the full technology landscape.
Nothing on this page constitutes an exhaustive prior-art, novelty, freedom-to-operate, or validity search, nor does it constitute legal, financial, investment, or professional advice, and it should not be relied upon as such. Any patent, commercial, or strategic decision should be verified independently and reviewed with qualified patent, legal, and domain professionals. Patsnap makes no warranties, express or implied, as to the accuracy, completeness, or fitness for any particular purpose of the information presented.
Machine translation. Assignee and organisation names originally recorded in Chinese, Japanese or Korean have been rendered into English by an AI translation step so that the tables stay readable. These renderings are best-effort and may not match a company’s registered English name; the original name is what the underlying patent record carries, and it is what any Eureka query launched from this page uses.