Fastest
Eureka on the web
When you want the answer in the next five minutes.
The agent works the prompt against patents and technical literature, citing every source.
Run your analysis now →https://www.patsnap.com/resources/blog/rd-blog/data-lake-table-formats-patent-landscape/ · Patsnap · data cut-off 2026-07-31 · downloaded from the live page
Patent Landscape · Query EnginesData Lake Table Formats: Who Holds the Patents on Schema Evolution, Time Travel and Metadata Catalogs
- 47.0% of all 394 records sit with just five assignees, and 63.5% with ten — this field is concentrated at the top, not fragmented.
- Filings grew 232% from 2021 to 2024 (19 to 63 records), the clearest signal that table-format claims accelerated well after Iceberg and Delta Lake reached production use.
- G06N-classed AI filings touch 25.6% of records showing table metadata is increasingly claimed alongside machine-learning workloads, not just storage engines.
394
Published Records
47%
Top-5 Share of All Records
+232%
Filing Growth 2021→2024
US
Leading Jurisdiction
Filing growth compares 2021 (19 records) with 2024 (63) — 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 394 records in scope (CR5), not by the ranked leaders only.
Published byPatsnap Research··7 min readSourced from Patsnap Eureka
Overview
What this landscape covers
This review covers patent filings and publications matching claims around data lake, table metadata and snapshot version concepts, combined with technical mechanisms including small file compaction, schema evolution, partition pruning, concurrent writer coordination, time travel query support and metadata catalog design. These are the mechanics that separate an open table format like Apache Iceberg or Delta Lake from a plain object store, and they are precisely what assignees are trying to lock down in claim language.
The scope runs from 2015 through the 2026-07-31 cut-off, with 394 published records in total. Because publication typically lags filing by around 18 months, the most recent one to two years of the trend understate real filing activity and should be read as provisional rather than a slowdown.
Filing activity and technology composition
Source: Patsnap Eureka. Assignee ranking and totals. Derived from a Patsnap search on Data Lake Table Formats covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-07-31. Counts reflect published records only and shift as new filings publish.Run this in Eureka MCP
Let an AI agent run this analysis on your own technology
Pick a task. Every answer cites the patents behind it.
10,000 free credits to start
The Numbers
Filing trends and technology composition
Two views of the same 394 records: how filing volume moved year over year, and which IPC subclasses those filings sit in. Both are read against the full record count, never against each other.
Filing trend, 2017-2026
Filings peaked at 69 in 2017, dipped through the early 2020s, then climbed sharply from 19 in 2021 to 63 in 2024 — a 232% increase over that three-year span. The 2025-2026 figures are still incomplete due to publication lag and should not be read as a decline.
IPC subclass composition
G06F (electric digital data processing) covers 91.9% of the 394 records, confirming this is fundamentally a data-processing field. G06N (AI-based computing) reaches 25.6%, and G06Q (business/commerce data processing) 9.9% — both far behind G06F but large enough to show table-format claims increasingly overlap with AI pipelines and business analytics rather than storage alone.
Shares are the percentage of the 394 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
Source: Patsnap Eureka. Filing trend and technology composition. Derived from a Patsnap search on Data Lake Table Formats covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-07-31. Counts reflect published records only and shift as new filings publish.
Go deeper on Data Lake Table Formats with Eureka
This page is one run against one query. Ask Eureka your own question about data lake table formats and every answer comes back with the patent numbers behind it.
Try EurekaKey Patents
Representative filing and most-cited prior art
Representative Recent Filing
Unified data management and analytics in cloud-based data lake environments
SAP SE
A cloud-based data platform enabling storage-agnostic data management and analytics in a unified environment. The system integrates a data lake implemented as a hyperscaler object store, a cloud-based DBMS, elastic compute resources, and analytics engines, with data stored in open table formats such as Apache Parquet, Delta Lake, and Apache Iceberg supporting ACID transactions, schema evolution, and efficient query processing. Virtual tables map data in the lake to the DBMS for in-situ SQL query processing, with support for change data capture and time travel.Filed by SAP SE, published 2026-03-19 — illustrates how vendors are now claiming the integration layer between open table formats and a managed DBMS, not just the table format mechanics themselves.
Most-cited records in this dataset
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | US20100088317A1 | Method and apparatus for harvesting file system metadata | 191 |
| 2 | US20140067792A1 | Apparatus and Method for Operating a Distributed Database with Foreign Tables | 159 |
| 3 | US20200364953A1 | Systems and methods for managing vehicle data | 155 |
| 4 | US7844582B1 | System and method for involving users in object management | 125 |
| 5 | US10983963B1 | Automated discovery, profiling, and management of data assets across distributed file systems through machine… | 121 |
| 6 | US20100145917A1 | System, method and apparatus for enterprise policy management | 114 |
| 7 | US20180096001A1 | System for importing data into a data repository | 111 |
| 8 | US20180052898A1 | System and method for dynamic, incremental recommendations within real-time visual simulation | 111 |
| 9 | US20180095952A1 | System for data management in a large scale data repository | 100 |
| 10 | US20180373781A1 | Data handling methods and system for data lakes | 79 |
Citation counts favour older filings simply because they have had more time to accumulate citations within the searched corpus — treat them as a signal of influence on the field, not of current commercial relevance.
Each row carries its publication number; clicking a row searches Eureka by that number.
Source: Patsnap Eureka. Citation counts and representative records. Derived from a Patsnap search on Data Lake Table Formats covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-07-31. Counts reflect published records only and shift as new filings publish.Run this in Eureka MCP
Run it yourself
Put your own technology through the same analysis
Where to run it
For builders
MCP server & REST API
When it has to run inside your own pipeline.
Patent search, landscape analysis and assignee resolution as MCP tools. Drop them into any agent framework, or call REST directly.
Browse MCP servers →Insights
What the data means for a filing strategy
Three patterns stand out once the raw counts are set against each other: where volume sits, where growth is happening, and where the claim space still overlaps with adjacent fields.
Concentration
47.0% of 394
held by top 5 assignees
The leaderboard is short
Five assignees hold 47.0% of all 394 records in scope, and the top ten hold 63.5%. That is a concentrated field: new entrants filing in the core mechanics of table metadata and snapshot versioning are filing into dense prior art held by a handful of large software and cloud vendors.
Based on the 83-company ranked assignee list
Momentum
+232%
2021 to 2024 filings
Growth is recent, not historic
The 2017 peak of 69 records reflects an earlier wave of general data-lake filings. The real acceleration in table-format-specific claims — schema evolution, concurrent writers, time travel — is the 2021-to-2024 run, up 232% from 19 to 63 records, tracking the production adoption of Iceberg and Delta Lake.
2025-2026 figures are still incomplete due to publication lag
Composition
25.6% of 394
carry a G06N (AI) class
AI overlap is already substantial
A quarter of records in this dataset carry a G06N classification alongside their core G06F data-processing class, meaning table metadata and catalog claims are already being written to cover machine-learning training and inference workloads, not just conventional query engines.
Class shares sum to more than 100% because records carry multiple IPC codes
Eureka AI Agent
Looking for what nobody has claimed yet?
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to data lake table formats, with the prior art for and against each one.
Source: Patsnap Eureka. Co-assignee relationships and derived observations. Derived from a Patsnap search on Data Lake Table Formats covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-07-31. Counts reflect published records only and shift as new filings publish.Run this in Eureka MCP
Players
Who is filing, and where the gaps sit
The ranked list running behind this page covers 83 companies, counted in records rather than raw document counts. The leader holds 69 records outright; by the tenth position, volume has already dropped to 8, showing a long tail below the concentrated top.
Leader
69 records
top-ranked assignee
One filer sits well clear of the field
The top-ranked assignee holds 69 records, more than double the fifth-place count of 28. That gap alone explains most of the 47.0% share held by the top five — this is not five roughly equal competitors, it is one leader plus a cluster behind it.
Ranked by patent family count
Mid-field
28 to 8 records
fifth to tenth place
A steep drop by tenth place
Volume falls from 28 records at fifth place to 8 at tenth, and the ranking runs to 83 companies in total. Most of the field files in single digits, which is typical of a technology area with a few platform vendors and many smaller or single-product entrants.
83 companies in the ranked assignee list
Recent activity
0 in latest year
for several top assignees
Leaders show no latest-year activity
Several of the highest-ranked assignees show zero filings in the latest tracked year, a pattern consistent with publication lag rather than withdrawal from the field — a filing made in 2025 or 2026 typically has not published yet.
Read alongside the 18-month publication lag noted above
Recent-year filing momentum
| Assignee | Recent year | YoY |
|---|---|---|
| Oracle International Corporation | 0 | -100% |
| GB Gas Holdings Limited | 0 | — |
| Snowflake Inc. | 0 | -100% |
| Google LLC | 0 | -100% |
| SAP SE | 0 | -100% |
| International Business Machines Corporation | 0 | — |
| Splunk Inc. | 0 | — |
| SUMO LOGIC | 0 | — |
Source: Patsnap Eureka. Assignee-level momentum. Derived from a Patsnap search on Data Lake Table Formats covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-07-31. Counts reflect published records only and shift as new filings publish.Run this in Eureka MCP
What's Next
Where to take this analysis
The figures above establish where the field stands as of the 2026-07-31 cut-off. Two follow-on steps make the picture actionable for a specific team.
Check claim overlap before drafting
Run a specific compaction, pruning or catalog mechanism against the most-cited records and the top-ranked assignees' recent filings to see whether the claim space is genuinely open or already covered by a broad independent claim.
Search this space in Eureka →Track the leaders' latest activity
Because 2025-2026 filings are still publishing, set up ongoing monitoring on the top-ranked assignees rather than relying on the current snapshot, which will look more complete as the lag closes.
Set up monitoring in Eureka →Source: Patsnap Eureka. Forward-looking reading of the same dataset. Derived from a Patsnap search on Data Lake Table Formats covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-07-31. Counts reflect published records only and shift as new filings publish.Run this in Eureka MCP
FAQ
Common questions about this landscape
One assignee leads the ranked list with 69 records, well ahead of the fifth-placed company at 28. The top five assignees together hold 47.0% of all 394 records in scope, and the top ten hold 63.5%, so the field is concentrated among a small group of large software and cloud vendors rather than evenly spread. Below the top ten, the ranking runs to 83 companies in total, most filing in single digits.
Filings grew sharply from 19 records in 2021 to 63 in 2024, a 232% increase, tracking the wider adoption of open table formats like Iceberg and Delta Lake in production systems. There was an earlier, separate peak of 69 records in 2017 tied to general data-lake filings. The 2025 and 2026 figures look lower only because publication lags filing by roughly 18 months — they should not be read as a slowdown.
The search covers claims combining core data-lake and table-metadata concepts with specific mechanisms: small file compaction, schema evolution, partition pruning, concurrent writer coordination, time travel querying, and metadata catalog design. These are the specific engineering problems that separate a managed table format from a plain file store, and they are where competing vendors are drawing claim boundaries.
Yes — 25.6% of the 394 records in scope carry a G06N classification, which covers AI-based computing, in addition to their primary G06F data-processing classification. This shows table metadata and catalog claims are increasingly being written to also cover machine-learning training and inference use cases, not purely conventional SQL query engines. G06Q (business and commerce data processing) appears in 9.9% of records, a smaller but notable secondary overlap.
The core mechanics — schema evolution, snapshot versioning, basic metadata catalogs — sit on dense prior art held by the leading assignees, so filing there means designing carefully around existing claims. Thinner areas in this dataset include cross-catalog snapshot reconciliation, concurrent writer conflict resolution across regions, and partition pruning tuned for streaming ingestion, which show less claim density relative to the core mechanisms and are worth checking specifically before drafting.
Answers are grounded in the same dataset. Derived from a Patsnap search on Data Lake Table Formats covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-07-31. Counts reflect published records only and shift as new filings publish.Run this in Eureka MCP
Research Data Lake Table Formats in depth with Eureka
Go past this page: query the whole data lake table formats corpus yourself, in your own scope.
Every answer comes back with patent numbers you can open.
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.