Cybersecurity Patents: Top Companies & Filing Trends 2026
Cybersecurity and cryptography patents: mapping who holds the claim space
10.7% of the field. The five leading assignees together account for 11,984 of 111,978 records in scope — concentrated, but leaving most of the field to a long tail. Filings rose from 998 in 2017 to a peak of 1,316 in 2019, then eased to 1,087 by 2024, the last complete year in scope — a -13% move from 2021's 1,243. Years after 2024 will fill in further as publication catches up with filing.
- 1CITRIX SYSTEMS INC2.9%
- 2INTEL CORP2.2%
- 3INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS MACHINE CORPORATION2.0%
- 4MICROSOFT TECHNOLOGY LICENSING LLC2.0%
- 5PURE STORAGE INC1.5%
See the full cybersecurity & cryptography 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 this landscape
Who are the top patent holders in cybersecurity and cryptography?
The ranking covers 100 companies, with the leading assignee holding 3,300 of the 111,978 records in scope, and the fifth and tenth-ranked holders at 1,732 and 1,257 respectively. Together the top five hold 10.7% of all records and the top ten hold 17.0%, which means concentration is real but the majority of filings sit outside the leading group. Large cloud, enterprise software, financial-services and semiconductor firms feature prominently in this ranking, reflecting how broadly authentication, encryption and access control claims now sit across industries rather than in a single security-product category.
Is cybersecurity patent filing activity growing or slowing?
Filing volume peaked at 1,316 records in 2019 and moderated to 1,087 by 2024, the most recent year with a complete publication record, a -13% change from 2021’s 1,243. That is a moderation from a peak rather than an outright decline, and figures for 2025 and 2026 will revise upward as publication catches up with roughly an 18-month lag. Anyone tracking this trend should treat the two most recent years in any chart as provisional rather than final.
Which patent classification covers the most cybersecurity filings?
H04L, digital information transmission, is the most heavily represented IPC subclass at 13.3% of the 111,978 records in scope, ahead of G06F (electric digital data processing) at 8.3%. Narrower classes like G09C (ciphering and secret communication) and G06N (AI-based computing) sit well below 1% of records each. Because records can carry multiple IPC codes, these percentages overlap rather than sum to a whole, so they describe density of claim activity in each area rather than a market share breakdown.
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 Cybersecurity & Cryptography 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.