Design for Test & BIST Patents: Who Leads, Where the Gaps Are 2026
- 52.2% of all 2,540 records sit with just five assignees, and 65.8% with ten — this field is unusually concentrated at the top for a testing sub-domain.
- Filings grew 38% from 2021 to 2024 (24 to 33 records), the last span publication lag lets us read cleanly, even as the leading legacy filers show no recent-year activity.
- G06F and B41J together anchor over 98% of the IPC composition weight, but G11C memory BIST claims (26.7%) and G07F vending-adjacent claims (15.2%) sit well behind the digital-processing core.
Filing growth compares 2021 (24 records) with 2024 (33) — 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 2,540 records in scope (CR5), not by the ranked leaders only.
What this patent set covers
Design for test (DFT) and built-in self test (BIST) patents cover the circuit-level and methodological work that lets a chip test itself: scan chain insertion, test point placement, at-speed testing, compression ratios that shrink tester data volume, and diagnostic resolution once a device fails. This dataset spans 2,540 published records filed or published between 2015 and mid-2026, drawn from a search string that pairs core DFT/BIST terminology with the specific technical levers — test point insertion, compression ratio, memory built in self test, silicon area overhead — that separate a genuine self-test claim from a broader test-and-measurement filing.
The IPC composition points to a field still centred on digital logic (G06F) and measurement (G01R), with a surprisingly large printing and imaging footprint (B41J, H04N, B42D) reflecting how DFT techniques originated in and remain claimed by imaging-hardware assignees. Memory BIST (G11C) and vending/coin-freed adjacencies (G07F) are present but thinner, which is where the white space sits.
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Filing trend and technology composition
Two views of the same 2,540-record set: how filing activity has moved year over year, and which IPC subclasses carry the claim weight.
A growth phase, read through a lagging tail
Annual filings ran from 61 in 2017 to a peak of 70 in 2018, and the 2021-to-2024 span shows a 38% increase (24 to 33 records). Publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, so 2025 and 2026 figures are still filling in and should not be read as a slowdown.
Where the claim density sits
G06F (58.7% of records) and B41J (39.8%) carry the bulk of the claim weight, with G01R measurement (34.5%) and H04N pictorial communication (33.5%) close behind. G11C memory BIST (26.7%) and the smaller G07F and B42D classes (15.2% and 14.2%) show where filing density thins out — note that classes overlap within records, so these shares do not sum to 100%.
Shares are the percentage of the 2,540 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
Go deeper on Design for Test and Built In Self Test with Eureka
This page is one run against one query. Ask Eureka your own question about design for test and built in self test and every answer comes back with the patent numbers behind it.
Try EurekaMost-cited records and a representative filing
US20070094629A1 — Methods and Apparatus for Making Placement Sensitive Logic Modifications
The filing, assigned to Bell Semiconductor, describes making a placement-sensitive engineering change to an already-placed chip design to meet DFT requirements: pruning the design to a set of valid flops and valid scan chains under defined pruning rules, building a unified flop database with physical location and connection data for new and existing flops, and generating a change file for the affected flops and scan chains that meets placement allocation constraints.Abstract trimmed for length; see the full record for claims and prosecution history.
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | WO1999004368A1 | A camera with internal printing system | 431 |
| 2 | US8126255B2 | Systems and methods for creating persistent data for a wafer and for using persistent data for inspection-rel… | 389 |
| 3 | US6362868B1 | Print media roll and ink replaceable cartridge | 363 |
| 4 | US6447113B1 | Duplex inkjet printing system | 353 |
| 5 | US7234645B2 | Document having an encoded data structure | 319 |
| 6 | US20060294312A1 | Generation sequences | 303 |
| 7 | US20090080759A1 | Systems and methods for creating persistent data for a wafer and for using persistent data for inspection-rel… | 267 |
| 8 | US20040143710A1 | Cache updating method and apparatus | 266 |
| 9 | US5956519A | Picture end token in a system comprising a plurality of pipeline stages | 260 |
| 10 | US20070083491A1 | Storage of key in non-volatile memory | 255 |
Citation counts inside a searched corpus favour older filings that have had more time to accumulate citations — read this table as a signal of influence within the corpus, not of current technical importance.
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Browse MCP servers →What the data means for a filing decision
Three read-throughs from the concentration, trend and citation figures above.
Claim space is dominated by a narrow set of filers
Over half of all records in scope belong to five assignees, and two-thirds sit with ten. For a new entrant, this means core scan-chain and test-point claim space is likely already occupied by a small number of large portfolios — freedom-to-operate work should start there, not with a broad novelty search.
Growth is real but concentrated in the pre-lag window
The three-year climb from 24 to 33 records is the cleanest recent signal available, since 2025 and 2026 filings are still being published. Several of the largest historical filers show no activity in the latest recorded year, which is consistent with portfolio maturity rather than field decline.
Memory BIST trails the digital-logic core
G06F and B41J dominate class weight, but G11C static/digital memory claims sit well below that at 26.7% of the 2,540 records, and G07F coin-freed/vending adjacencies lower still at 15.2%. These thinner classes are candidates for a closer prior-art read before assuming the space is crowded.
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to design for test and built in self test, with the prior art for and against each one.
The assignee landscape
The ranked table covers 100 companies scored across the full 2,540-record set. Filing counts here are the whole ranking the data endpoint returns, not a curated top list — treat gaps between ranks as informative in themselves.
One filer holds a outsized single share
The leading assignee's 483 records are nearly a fifth of the entire 2,540-record set on its own, well ahead of the drop to fifth place at 136 and tenth place at 46. That gap matters for anyone doing FTO work: a single portfolio review can clear a large share of collision risk before touching the long tail.
A long tail of narrower, single-purpose filers
Below the top ten, the ranking thins quickly toward assignees with a handful of records each — often reflecting a single product line's test architecture rather than a platform strategy. These are useful licensing or acquisition targets when a specific technique, rather than a broad portfolio, is what's needed.
Inventor pairs cluster inside a handful of firms
Ten co-assignee pairs appear in the dataset, with the strongest pairing co-assigned on 42 records. This kind of clustering usually signals a stable internal team driving a portfolio's test-architecture claims over several filing cycles, rather than one-off inventorship.
| Assignee | Recent year | YoY |
|---|---|---|
| Silverbrook Research Pty Ltd | 0 | — |
| Mentor Graphics Corp | 0 | — |
| SILVEBROOK KIA | 0 | — |
| DiscoVision Associates | 0 | — |
| International Business Machines Corporation | 0 | -100% |
| Memjet Technology Ltd | 0 | — |
| WALMSLEY SIMON | 0 | — |
| RAJSKI JANUSZ | 0 | — |
Where to take this analysis
The figures above answer where claim density sits today. Two follow-on questions decide what to do with that.
Run a freedom-to-operate check against the top holders
With 52.2% of records held by five assignees, a targeted FTO review of those portfolios clears most of the collision risk before a broader search is needed.
Explore assignee portfolios in Eureka →Scope a claim in the thinner IPC branches
G11C memory BIST and G07F adjacencies carry less filing density than the G06F/B41J core — worth a prior-art pass before assuming the space is closed.
Search white space in Eureka →Common questions on DFT and BIST patents
The ranked assignee table for this dataset covers 100 companies across 2,540 records, and it is heavily top-weighted: the leading assignee alone holds 483 records, compared with 136 at fifth place and 46 at tenth. Combined, the top five assignees hold 52.2% of all records in scope, and the top ten hold 65.8%. That means a small number of portfolios control most of the claim space, while a long tail of assignees hold only a handful of records each, often tied to a single product line's test architecture.
Filing activity climbed from 24 records in 2021 to 33 in 2024, a 38% increase over that span, which is the most recent period that can be read as complete. Publication typically lags actual filing by around 18 months, so the lower counts visible in 2025 and 2026 reflect that lag rather than a genuine drop in activity. Historical peak filing was 70 records in 2018, and the field has held a broadly steady pace since, punctuated by individual large filers going quiet in recent years.
Electric digital data processing (G06F) appears in 58.7% of the 2,540 records, making it the dominant class, followed by printer/typewriter mechanisms (B41J) at 39.8% and electric/magnetic measurement (G01R) at 34.5%. Video and imaging (H04N) and data recognition (G06K) both sit above 28%, reflecting how much DFT technique development has historically come out of imaging and printing hardware. Memory BIST (G11C, 26.7%) and coin-freed apparatus adjacencies (G07F, 15.2%) are comparatively thinner, since records can carry multiple classes these shares naturally overlap and sum to more than 100%.
Relative to the dominant G06F and B41J classes, memory BIST diagnostic resolution, test compression ratio optimisation, and silicon area overhead reduction all show thinner representation in this dataset even though they are named directly in the search criteria. Coin-freed and vending-adjacent self-test claims (G07F, 15.2% of records) are similarly less crowded than the digital-processing core. These are reasonable starting points for a first claim, but should be paired with a targeted prior-art search rather than treated as guaranteed open space.
The most-cited records in this set, including several printer and imaging-system filings, accumulated their citation counts over many years inside the searched corpus, which structurally favours older documents simply because they've had longer to be cited. A high citation count signals influence within the corpus at the time it was searched, not that the underlying technology is currently the most active or valuable filing area. Readers should cross-check citation leaders against the recent filing trend before assuming they represent the current state of the art.
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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.