Columnar Storage Format Patents: Top Companies & Trends 2026
Columnar Storage Format Patents: Who Is Filing and Where the Field Is Headed
26.2% of all 7,822 records sit with just five assignees, so the top of the field is genuinely concentrated even though 100 companies appear in the ranking. Filings rose from 273 in 2017 to a peak of 419 in 2021, then declined to 188 by 2024, a -55% move over that three-year span. 2025 and 2026 figures are still filling in due to publication lag and should not be read as a continued fall.
- 1SONY GROUP CORP11.2%
- 2LG ELECTRONICS INC4.1%
- 3DIGIMARC CORP3.9%
- 4HUAWEI TECH CO LTD3.6%
- 5IMAGINATION TECH LTD3.3%
See the full columnar storage formats 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 columnar storage format patents
Who holds the most patents on columnar storage formats?
The assignee ranking in this corpus is led by one company with 879 records, well ahead of the fifth-place holder at 256 and tenth place at 144. The top five assignees combined hold 26.2% of all 7,822 records in scope, and the top ten hold 38.9%, so the field has a concentrated top tier even though the ranking runs to 100 companies. Anyone assessing competitive exposure should look at that leader’s specific claim scope rather than assume the concentration is evenly spread across all named players.
Is patent filing in columnar storage formats growing or shrinking?
Filings peaked in 2021 at 419 and fell to 188 by 2024, a -55% decline over that three-year span, using 2024 as the last year that can be treated as complete. Figures for 2025 and 2026 will look artificially low right now because publication typically lags filing by around 18 months, so those years should not be read as a continuation of the decline yet. Taken together, the honest read is a real cooling from the 2021 peak, not a technology in early growth.
What technology areas dominate columnar storage format claims?
H04N, the pictorial communication and video/TV class, appears in 57.6% of the 7,822 records in scope, making it by far the largest single IPC subclass in this corpus. H03M coding and code conversion (20.5%) and G06T image data processing (20.1%) follow at a similar level to each other, with G06F electric digital data processing close behind at 19.5%. This composition shows that a large share of columnar storage claims in this dataset are tied to video and image compression pipelines rather than general-purpose analytical database engines.
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 Columnar Storage Formats covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-07-31. 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.