API & Integration Technology Patents: Leaders & Filing Trends 2026
API and Integration Technology Patents: Who Files, What They Claim, and Where Filing Is Heading
Concentrated but not locked up. The ranked leaders' top 5 account for 20.3% of all 207,854 records in scope, and the top 10 reach 29.6% — leaving most of the field to a long tail of single- and few-filing entrants. Filings rose from 987 in 2017 to a peak of 1,922 in 2022. The comparison that matters for planning is 2021 to 2024 — the last year publication lag lets us treat as complete — where volume fell from 1,685 to 1,337, a 21% decline. Years after 2024 will continue to fill in as later-filed applications publish, so treat 2025-2026 figures as a floor, not a ceiling.
- 1SAMSUNG ELECTRONICS CO LTD7.9%
- 2INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS MACHINE CORPORATION4.1%
- 3QUALCOMM INC2.9%
- 4MICROSOFT TECHNOLOGY LICENSING LLC2.9%
- 5HUAWEI TECH CO LTD2.5%
See the full api & integration technology 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 on API and integration technology patents
Who holds the most API and integration technology patents?
The ranked assignee list is led by a large technology company with 16,478 records, well ahead of fifth place at 5,232 and tenth place at 3,467. That said, the top 10 combined only reach 29.6% of all 207,854 records in scope, so no single company or small group controls the field outright. Most of the filing volume sits in a long tail of companies filing in smaller numbers, which is where a freedom-to-operate search usually needs to spend the most time.
Is API patent filing activity growing or shrinking?
Filing volume grew from 987 records in 2017 to a peak of 1,922 in 2022, then pulled back — the last complete comparison window shows 1,685 filings in 2021 falling to 1,337 in 2024, a 21% decline. Publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, so 2025 and 2026 figures in any dataset will keep rising as more applications publish; they should not yet be read as a continuation of the decline. A fair read is that filing has cooled from its 2022 high, not that the field is shrinking outright.
What technology areas dominate API and integration patent claims?
G06F, the general electric digital data processing subclass, dominates at 6.9% of all 207,854 records in scope — more than double the next largest subclass, H04L (digital information transmission) at 2.5%. Business-process claims under G06Q and AI-model claims under G06N follow at smaller shares. Because a single patent can carry several IPC classes, these percentages add up to more than 100% of the record total, which is expected and not a data error.
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 API & Integration Technology 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.