Configuration and Policy Management Patents: Leaders & Trends 2026
Configuration and Policy Management Patents: Who Leads and Where the Field Is Heading
38.3% concentration. The five leading assignees account for 254 of 664 records in scope — claim space at the top is dense before you even open the ranking. Filings rose from 35 in 2017 to a peak of 86 in 2023, then declined to 57 by 2024 — a 31% drop across the 2021–2024 window. The 2025 and 2026 figures are still filling in due to publication lag and should not be read as a continued fall.
- 1VMWARE INC77
- 2INTERDIGITAL PATENT HOLDINGS INC49
- 3MICROSOFT TECHNOLOGY LICENSING LLC47
- 4ORACLE INT CORP41
- 5TAIWAN SEMICONDUCTOR MANUFACTURING CO LTD40
See the full configuration and policy management 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 this landscape
Who holds the most patents in configuration and policy management?
One assignee leads the ranked list with 77 records, noticeably ahead of the rest of the field — fifth place holds 40 and tenth place holds 18. Together the top five assignees account for 254 of the 664 records in scope, or 38.3% of the field, meaning a small group of companies controls a disproportionate share of claimed invention here. The remaining 90-plus ranked assignees each hold much smaller counts, forming a long tail of single- or low-digit filers.
Is patent filing in this space growing or slowing down?
Filings grew steadily from 35 in 2017 to a peak of 86 in 2023, then fell to 57 by 2024 — a 31% decline across that three-year span. Because publication typically lags actual filing by around 18 months, the 2025 and 2026 counts in any dataset are still incomplete and understate real activity. The honest read is a field that peaked in 2023 and cooled somewhat by 2024, not one in freefall.
What technology areas dominate configuration and policy management patents?
Digital information transmission (H04L) and general electric data processing (G06F) are the two largest IPC classes, tagging 52.9% and 49.1% of the 664 records respectively — many filings sit across both. Wireless networking (H04W) covers 27.1% of records, while video, general transmission, business-process and AI-based computing classes each account for a few percent or less. This mix shows the field is still framed mainly as network-protocol and data-processing invention rather than AI-native policy 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 Configuration and Policy Management 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.