Containers & Orchestration Patents: Filing Trends and Who Holds the Claims
41.0% concentration. The top 5 assignees hold 8,290 of 20,202 records in scope — filing here means competing directly against an entrenched top tier, not a fragmented field. Filings rose from 1,074 in 2017 to a peak of 2,758 in 2022. The complete-year comparison of 2,589 (2021) against 2,250 (2024) shows a 13% decline — real, but a pullback from a peak rather than a market in retreat. 2025 and 2026 figures (down to 291 for the partial latest year) understate true filing activity because of publication lag.
- 1TELEFONAKTIEBOLAGET LM ERICSSON (PUBL)11.7%
- 2PURE STORAGE INC9.6%
- 3CISCO TECHNOLOGY INC7.3%
- 4NVIDIA CORP6.8%
- 5AMAZON TECH INC5.5%
See the full containers & orchestration 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 container and orchestration patents
Who holds the most container and orchestration patents?
The assignee ranking in this dataset covers 100 companies drawn from 20,202 records, and the leading filer holds 2,367 of them — well ahead of fifth place at 1,110. The top five combined account for 41.0% of all records in scope. This is a concentrated field: a small group of cloud infrastructure and enterprise software companies account for a plurality of filings, with a long tail of smaller filers below tenth place.
Is container and orchestration patent filing still growing?
Filings peaked in 2022 at 2,758 records and have since eased; comparing the two most recent complete years, 2021's 2,589 filings dropped to 2,250 in 2024, a 13% decline. That is a pullback from an unusually high peak rather than a collapse in interest. Figures for 2025 and 2026 look lower still, but that reflects an 18-month publication lag rather than an actual drop in filing activity.
What technology areas do container patents mostly cover?
Most records classify under G06F (electric digital data processing, 60.7% of the 20,202 records) and H04L (digital information transmission, 41.1%), reflecting that the core claim territory is compute infrastructure and networking rather than any single application area. AI-based computing (G06N) appears on 9.5% of records, and wireless networking (H04W) on 8.2%, showing these are present but secondary claim surfaces. Because a single record can carry multiple IPC classes, these percentages add up to well over 100% of the record total.
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 Containers & Orchestration 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.