Device Identity Patents: Who Leads, Where the Gaps Are 2026
- 164 families, filings past their peak. Activity peaked at 27 filings in 2021 and has declined since, with leading assignees showing flat or zero filings in the latest year.
- Claim space concentrated in H04L and G06F. 129 of 164 records sit under digital information transmission and 98 under data processing, leaving wireless-specific and IoT-native provisioning comparatively open.
- Joint filing is rare. Only 10 co-assignee pairs appear across the corpus, meaning most provisioning and attestation claims are filed by a single organization rather than developed jointly.
Filing growth compares 2021 (27 records) with 2024 (10) — 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 164 records in scope (CR5), not by the ranked leaders only.
A field built on key injection, attestation and certificate lifecycle claims
Device identity and secure provisioning patents cover the mechanisms by which a device proves what it is and receives trusted credentials, spanning key injection at manufacture, certificate lifecycle management, secure boot chain integration and attestation protocols. The 164 patent families identified here span 2015 through the 2026 data cut-off, filed under IPC classes covering digital information transmission, data processing and wireless networks.
Filing activity peaked in 2021 and has since declined, which combined with a heavy concentration in two IPC subclasses suggests the core claim territory for device identity and provisioning was staked out earlier rather than being actively contested today. The open questions for a new entrant are less about whether to file and more about which under-claimed branch — wireless-specific or IoT-native provisioning — still has room.
Filing trends and technology composition
Annual filing counts and IPC distribution for the 164 families in this corpus, drawn from records published between 2015 and the 2026 data cut-off.
Filings by year, 2017-2026
Filings peaked at 27 in 2021, held near the 2022 midpoint of 14, and have declined through the most recent years; the final one or two years are undercounted because publication typically lags filing by around 18 months.
IPC subclass distribution
H04L (129 records) and G06F (98) dominate, reflecting that most filings frame device identity as a cryptographic transmission or data-processing problem; H04W (48) covers wireless-specific provisioning, while G06Q, G16Y, H04M, H04N and F24F each account for single digits to low teens and mark the edges of the field.
Shares are the percentage of the 164 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
Go deeper on Device Identity and Secure Provisioning with Eureka
This page is one run against one query. Ask Eureka your own question about device identity and secure provisioning and every answer comes back with the patent numbers behind it.
Try EurekaThe records anchoring this landscape
US11026093B2 — Extensible device identity attestation
Provisioning a requesting device is provided using extended identity attestation for the requesting device. A provisioning request is received at a device provisioning system, including a registration identifier from the requesting device. A plurality of extended attestation components is accessed in an enrollment datastore, and one is selected based on the received registration identifier. Execution of device attestation is then initiated at the external computing system identified by the selected component.Filed by Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC; granted 2021-06-01.
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | US20120137137A1 | Method and apparatus for key provisioning of hardware devices | 210 |
| 2 | US20170237560A1 | Secure provisioning of operating systems | 88 |
| 3 | US20180137261A1 | Secure provisioning and management of devices | 63 |
| 4 | US20140032920A1 | Secure Virtual Machine Provisioning | 58 |
| 5 | US20210073003A1 | Integrity manifest certificate | 42 |
| 6 | WO2018126075A1 | Type naming and blockchain for the sub-objects of a composite object in an internet of things network | 31 |
| 7 | US20160308677A1 | Isolation of Trusted Input/Output Devices | 28 |
| 8 | US20140089659A1 | Method and apparatus for key provisioning of hardware devices | 28 |
| 9 | WO2012148324A1 | Secure virtual machine provisioning | 24 |
| 10 | US11108627B2 | Object identification for groups of IoT devices | 21 |
Citation counts inside a searched corpus favor older records; treat them as a measure of influence on later filings, not as a ranking of current commercial importance.
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The volume and concentration of filings point to where claim space is occupied and where it is still open, independent of any single company's strategy.
Filings have declined from their 2021 peak
Filings rose to a peak of 27 in 2021, held near 14 at the 2022 midpoint, and have fallen since. Because publication lags filing by around 18 months, the most recent years understate true filing activity, but the multi-year downward slope predates that lag window.
Two IPC subclasses cover most of the corpus
H04L (digital information transmission) and G06F (data processing) together account for the large majority of the 164 families, meaning most inventors frame device identity as a cryptographic or processing problem rather than a wireless- or IoT-specific one.
Most filings are single-assignee
Only 10 co-assignee pairs appear across 164 families, and the strongest pairing recurs just three times. Provisioning and attestation IP in this space is overwhelmingly developed and filed within a single organization rather than through formal joint filings.
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to device identity and secure provisioning, with the prior art for and against each one.
Who holds the claim space
Filing activity concentrates among a small set of technology and semiconductor firms, with recent-year momentum flat or declining across the leading names — a pattern consistent with a claim space that was built out earlier rather than one still being actively contested.
A short list of repeat filers plus a long tail
The assignee ranking spans large technology, semiconductor and OS platform companies alongside numerous single-filing entrants, typical of a field where foundational claims were established by a handful of early movers.
Leading filers have gone quiet recently
Several of the most active historical assignees, including major technology-licensing and semiconductor firms, show zero new filings in the latest tracked year, with at least one recording a full year-over-year drop.
Joint filings are the exception
Only 10 co-assignee pairs exist across the corpus, the strongest recurring three times, indicating most patents here originate from single-organization R&D rather than formal joint ventures or co-development agreements.
| Assignee | Recent year | YoY |
|---|---|---|
| Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC | 0 | — |
| Assured Information Security, LLC | 0 | — |
| Intel Corporation | 0 | — |
| Kookmin University Industry Academy Cooperation Foundation | 0 | — |
| Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd. | 0 | — |
| Google LLC | 0 | -100% |
| Micron Technology, Inc. | 0 | -100% |
| Hewlett Packard Enterprise Development LP | 0 | -100% |
Where to take this analysis
The filing data points to specific decisions for teams working on device identity and provisioning technology.
Check freedom to operate against the top-cited claims
US20120137137A1 and US20170237560A1 anchor most of the later filings in this corpus; any new provisioning architecture should be checked against their specific claim language before development proceeds.
Explore claim scope in EurekaEvaluate the IoT and wireless-specific gaps
G16Y and H04W filings are a fraction of the H04L/G06F total, suggesting room for claims tied specifically to constrained IoT transports or wireless authentication flows.
Map white space in EurekaWatch for renewed filing activity
Leading assignees show flat or zero filings in the latest tracked year; a shift back upward, once the 18-month publication lag clears, would signal renewed competitive interest worth monitoring.
Track assignee momentum in EurekaCommon questions on device identity and secure provisioning patents
The most-cited records in this corpus, such as US20120137137A1 on hardware key provisioning and US20170237560A1 on secure operating system provisioning, function as the foundational prior art that later filings build on. Because citation counts favor older records, treat high citation numbers as a sign of influence on subsequent filings rather than a sign that the approach is still the state of the art. Any freedom-to-operate review in this space should start with these early, heavily cited filings before moving to recent applications.
Filing activity is concentrated among a small group of large technology and semiconductor firms, alongside a long tail of single-filing entrants. Recent-year momentum across the leading assignees has flattened to zero or declined, which suggests the core claim space around key injection and certificate-based attestation was staked out earlier rather than being actively contested now. Co-assignee pairs are rare in this dataset, indicating most work is filed by a single organization rather than through joint development.
No, filings peaked at 27 in 2021 and have declined since, sitting at 14 by the 2022 midpoint and continuing downward through the most recent years. This does not necessarily mean the technology is losing relevance; publication lag of roughly 18 months means the final one to two years in any trend chart are always undercounted. A flat or declining count paired with high total family volume (164) more likely reflects a maturing claim landscape than a shrinking one.
IoT-native provisioning workflows are the clearest gap, with only 4 records under the G16Y subclass compared with 129 under H04L, meaning most attestation and provisioning claims are still framed as general cryptographic or data-processing inventions rather than built for constrained IoT transports. Embedded and appliance-adjacent categories such as F24F show only a single record. A first claim drafted around a specific constrained-bandwidth attestation payload and transport step would sit outside the densest existing claim territory.
No. US11026093B2 covers a specific mechanism: selecting an external attestation component from an enrollment datastore based on a registration identifier supplied by the requesting device, with execution handed to that external system. It does not cover attestation performed entirely on-device or through a fixed, non-selectable attestation path. Teams should review the claim's specific selection-and-routing structure rather than assume it covers device attestation broadly.
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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.