Cybersecurity Patents: Top Companies & Filing Trends 2026
- 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.
- Filing eased, not collapsed. Complete-year filings ran 1,243 in 2021 to 1,087 in 2024, a -13% move over that span, after peaking at 1,316 in 2019.
- H04L dominates the claim map. Digital information transmission (H04L) touches 13.3% of records, more than four times the share of G09C, the dedicated ciphering subclass at 0.7%.
Filing growth compares 2021 (1,243 records) with 2024 (1,087) — a three-year span. 2024 is the most recent year we treat as complete: publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, so 2025 onwards are still filling in and any growth rate that ends there would understate the field. Top-5 share is the combined record count of the five largest assignees divided by all 111,978 records in scope (CR5), not by the ranked leaders only.
What this landscape covers
This dataset spans 111,978 published records filed between 2015 and the 2026 data cut-off, drawn from filings that combine cybersecurity or cryptography language with mechanisms like authentication tokens, encryption keys, access control and identity authentication. That combination pulls in infrastructure-level security work rather than every document that merely mentions encryption in passing.
Publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, so the most recent one to two years in any trend understate real filing activity. Patent families, not raw document counts, are the fairer unit for comparing organisations here, since families neutralise aggressive continuation practice and multi-jurisdiction refiling.
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Filing trends and technology composition
Two views of the same 111,978 records: how filing volume moved year over year, and which IPC subclasses carry the claim density.
Filing trend, 2017–2026
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.
Technology composition by IPC subclass
H04L (digital information transmission) leads at 13.3% of records, followed by G06F (electric digital data processing) at 8.3%. Because a record can carry several IPC classes, these shares sum to more than 100% of the 111,978 records in scope — they describe overlap in claim scope, not a partition of the field.
Shares are the percentage of the 111,978 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
Go deeper on Cybersecurity & Cryptography Patent Landscape with Eureka
This page is one run against one query. Ask Eureka your own question about cybersecurity & cryptography patent landscape and every answer comes back with the patent numbers behind it.
Try EurekaFoundational and representative filings
US11483136B2 — Wrapped keys with access control predicates
Filed by Google, this record describes obtaining a cryptographic key for content, encrypting that content, and generating an encryption request that asks a third-party cryptography service to encrypt an encapsulation of the key together with an access control condition governing access to the content.Published 2022-10-25. The claim structure ties key wrapping directly to an access control predicate enforced by a third-party service, rather than leaving access control as a separate downstream step.
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | US5892900A | Systems and methods for secure transaction management and electronic rights protection | 6,074 |
| 2 | US6850252B1 | Intelligent electronic appliance system and method | 4,058 |
| 3 | US20090254572A1 | Digital information infrastructure and method | 2,824 |
| 4 | US5862325A | Computer-based communication system and method using metadata defining a control structure | 2,709 |
| 5 | US5677955A | Electronic funds transfer instruments | 2,041 |
| 6 | US5768382A | Remote-auditing of computer generated outcomes and authenticated biling and access control system using crypt… | 1,979 |
| 7 | US5862223A | Method and apparatus for a cryptographically-assisted commercial network system designed to facilitate and su… | 1,907 |
| 8 | US5982891A | Systems and methods for secure transaction management and electronic rights protection | 1,903 |
| 9 | US5910987A | Systems and methods for secure transaction management and electronic rights protection | 1,785 |
| 10 | US20100250497A1 | Electromagnetic pulse (EMP) hardened information infrastructure with extractor, cloud dispersal, secure stora… | 1,773 |
Citation counts inside a searched corpus favour older records structurally; treat them as a signal of influence on later filings, not of current commercial relevance.
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Browse MCP servers →What the concentration and citation data indicate
Reading assignee concentration, citation age and receiving-office spread together points to where claim space is occupied and where the gaps sit.
Leadership is real but shallow
The leading assignee holds 3,300 records, with the fifth-place holder at 1,732 and tenth place at 1,257. That gradient — not a sheer cliff — means the top 10 combined (17.0% of all records) still leaves the large majority of filings spread across a long tail of single- and few-filing entrants.
Volume eased from a 2019 peak
Filings peaked at 1,316 in 2019 and have since settled lower, at 1,087 in 2024 — the last year with a complete publication record. This is a moderation from a peak, not a reversal of interest in the field; recent-year figures will revise upward as later publications land.
Foundational filings sit decades back
The most-cited record in this corpus, on secure transaction management and electronic rights protection, carries 6,074 citations — a figure built up over a long window that newer filings simply have not had time to match. High citation counts here mark historical influence on the field's vocabulary, not present-day competitive weight.
Filing is US-centred with real PCT and EPO volume
The United States leads receiving offices at 12,123 filings, with EPO at 3,212 and WIPO's PCT route at 2,187 — sizeable enough that a freedom-to-operate check confined to one jurisdiction would miss meaningful prior art elsewhere.
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to cybersecurity & cryptography patent landscape, with the prior art for and against each one.
Who is filing, and where the activity is thinning
Assignee concentration sits at the top of the ranking, but recent-year momentum figures for named leaders are all moving in the same direction: down.
A single leader, then a graded drop-off
The top-ranked assignee holds 3,300 records against 1,732 at fifth place and 1,257 at tenth — a gradual decline rather than a cliff, consistent with several large technology, cloud and financial-services filers competing across overlapping claim territory.
Every tracked leader slowed in the latest year
Recent-year momentum for named leading assignees is uniformly negative — filings in the single low digits against year-earlier volumes, with drops as steep as -85% for one filer. Given the roughly 18-month publication lag, part of this is an artefact of incomplete recent data rather than a genuine pullback.
Co-filing is limited and mostly intra-group
Only 10 co-assignee pairs appear in this dataset, and the strongest links connect a single corporate group's national subsidiaries and IP departments to each other rather than to outside partners — cross-company joint filing is not a notable feature of this landscape.
| Assignee | Recent year | YoY |
|---|---|---|
| Capital One Services, LLC | 3 | -85% |
| Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC | 2 | -71% |
| Apple Inc. | 2 | -60% |
| Intel Corporation | 1 | -67% |
| Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. (Korea) | 1 | -75% |
| Google LLC | 1 | -67% |
| International Business Machines Corporation (IBM) | 0 | -100% |
| Microsoft Corporation | 0 | — |
Where to take this analysis
The dataset points to specific next checks rather than a single conclusion.
Check freedom-to-operate against the top 10
With 17.0% of all 111,978 records held by ten assignees, a targeted clearance search against that group's claim scope, particularly in H04L and G06F, is more efficient than a broad field-wide search.
Run a clearance searchTrack whether the 2021-2024 moderation continues
The -13% move from 2021 to 2024 is the most recent complete-year comparison available; later years will fill in as publications catch up, so re-check this trend on a 12-18 month cycle rather than reading 2025-2026 figures at face value.
Set a filing alertExplore under-claimed branches before the window closes
Subclasses like G09C and G06N sit well below H04L's density, suggesting narrower but still-open claim space for post-quantum cryptography and AI-driven security event detection.
Explore white spaceCommon questions on this landscape
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.
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.
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.
US11483136B2, assigned to Google and published 2022-10-25, covers wrapped keys governed by access control predicates: a cryptographic key encrypts content, and a separate encryption request asks a third-party cryptography service to encrypt an encapsulation of that key together with the access condition governing who can use it. The distinguishing feature is binding the access control condition to the wrapped key itself rather than enforcing access as a separate downstream check. Anyone building key-wrapping or key-escrow functionality with conditional release should read the full claim set rather than relying on the abstract.
Relative to H04L's 13.3% share of records, subclasses tied to AI-driven security event detection (G06N, 0.5%), pictorial or video-stream encryption (H04N, 0.8%) and recognition-based access control (G06K, 0.5%) carry comparatively thin claim density given the overall size of the field. That does not mean these areas are unclaimed, but the concentration of filings elsewhere suggests narrower, more specific claims in these branches face less crowded prior art than a generic authentication or encryption-key claim would.
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Disclaimer. This page is generated from Patsnap Eureka data drawn from a limited snapshot of global patent and scientific-literature records, and is provided for general information and reference only.
Patent data carries inherent limitations: recent filings (typically the most recent 18–24 months) are under-counted due to standard publication lag; counts may be reported at either a patent-family or a patent-record basis and are not always directly comparable; classification, applicant-name, and citation data may contain errors, duplicates, or omissions; and the underlying search query defines and constrains the scope shown. As a result, the analysis may be incomplete or inaccurate and may not reflect the full technology landscape.
Nothing on this page constitutes an exhaustive prior-art, novelty, freedom-to-operate, or validity search, nor does it constitute legal, financial, investment, or professional advice, and it should not be relied upon as such. Any patent, commercial, or strategic decision should be verified independently and reviewed with qualified patent, legal, and domain professionals. Patsnap makes no warranties, express or implied, as to the accuracy, completeness, or fitness for any particular purpose of the information presented.
Machine translation. Assignee and organisation names originally recorded in Chinese, Japanese or Korean have been rendered into English by an AI translation step so that the tables stay readable. These renderings are best-effort and may not match a company’s registered English name; the original name is what the underlying patent record carries, and it is what any Eureka query launched from this page uses.