The dataset tracks 453 families across assignees including OmniVision, Samsung, Sony Semiconductor Solutions, Micron, Nikon and TSMC, among others, with filing concentrated among a smaller set of repeat filers and a long tail of single-filing entrants. Rather than one dominant holder, the field shows the packaging-specific claims spread across several large sensor and semiconductor manufacturers who each hold meaningful but not overwhelming share. Checking the assignee ranking directly is more reliable than assuming a single company controls the space, since recent-year momentum has flattened across all of them simultaneously.

Filing peaked at 57 families in 2019 and had fallen to 17 by the 2022 midpoint, which is consistent with a claim space that became crowded rather than one that lost commercial relevance. Core techniques such as through-silicon via formation, wafer-level packaging and stacked-chip imaging had already accumulated dense prior art by the late 2010s, narrowing the room for genuinely novel claims. Part of the apparent 2025-2026 drop is also a publication-lag artefact, since patent applications typically take around 18 months to publish, so the most recent years understate real filing activity.

Through-silicon via (TSV) technology creates vertical electrical connections by etching and filling channels through the silicon wafer, connecting stacked dies without wire bonding at the edges. Hybrid bonding instead joins two wafers or dies directly at the bond interface, combining metal-to-metal and dielectric-to-dielectric bonding in the same step to shrink interconnect pitch further than TSV alone typically allows. Both terms appear in this dataset's search criteria, and many families combine references to both techniques within the same packaging claim set.

This Shanghai IC R&D Center filing claims a specific process sequence for forming a deep trench and a through-silicon via on the same wafer: thinning the wafer, forming the trench, filling it with organic material, then etching the via and depositing a dielectric protective layer across both structures. It does not claim the general concept of combining deep trenches with TSVs, so a different processing order or a different fill/protection sequence would likely fall outside its claim scope. Anyone implementing a similar dual-structure approach should compare their exact process flow against the claim language rather than assuming the whole trench-plus-TSV concept is blocked.

The IPC composition shows core semiconductor-device claims (H01L) present in every record, but comparatively thinner filing in adjacent areas such as deep-trench isolation fill materials, hybrid bonding pad surface treatment and wafer-level chip-scale cover integration. These sub-areas sit next to dense core claim territory rather than in isolation, which is why they are worth a targeted novelty search rather than a broad filing. Confirming white space requires checking current pending applications as well as granted claims, since the 18-month publication lag means the newest filings in these branches may not yet be visible.