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Run your analysis now →https://www.patsnap.com/resources/blog/rd-blog/devops-and-platform-engineering-patent-landscape-patent-landscape/ · Patsnap · data cut-off 2026-08-31 · downloaded from the live page
Patent Landscape · Software & Cloud SystemsDevOps and platform engineering patents: who is filing, what they claim, and where the field is still open
- Concentrated but not locked up. the ranked leader holds 1,532 records and the top 5 assignees combine for 29.5% of all 8,150 records in scope — a strong core with a long tail behind it.
- Filing has cooled from its peak. 2021 was the high point at 1,138 records; by 2024, the last complete year, filings had settled to 982, a 14% pull-back over that span.
- Claims cluster hard around G06F. 84.7% of records carry a G06F digital-data-processing class, while AI-flavoured G06N appears in just 11.2% — a gap between infrastructure claims and AI-native delivery-pipeline claims.
8,150
Published Records
30%
Top-5 Share of All Records
-14%
Filing Growth 2021→2024
US
Leading Jurisdiction
Filing growth compares 2021 (1,138 records) with 2024 (982) — 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 8,150 records in scope (CR5), not by the ranked leaders only.
Published byPatsnap Research··7 min readSourced from Patsnap Eureka
Field Overview
What this landscape covers
This review covers 8,150 published patent records matching software delivery pipeline, continuous integration and DevOps terminology combined with source code, module, test case, deployment pipeline, service discovery or configuration management concepts. The scope spans filings from 2015 through the 2026-08-31 data cut-off, capturing both the infrastructure-automation wave that peaked in 2021 and the more recent shift toward AI-assisted delivery tooling.
Because publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, the most recent one to two years in any trend understate real filing activity; 2024 is the last year that can be read as complete, and later years will continue to fill in as records publish.
Filing activity and technology mix, 2015-2026
Source: Patsnap Eureka. Assignee ranking and totals. Derived from a Patsnap search on DevOps & Platform Engineering Patent Landscape covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-08-31. Counts reflect published records only and shift as new filings publish.Run this in Eureka MCP
The Numbers
Filing trend and technology composition
Two views of the same 8,150-record corpus: how filing volume moved year over year, and which IPC subclasses carry the claims.
A 2021 peak, then a cool-down
Filings rose from 294 in 2017 to a peak of 1,138 in 2021, then eased to 982 by 2024 — a 14% decline over that three-year span. Read the 2025-2026 tail as incomplete rather than as a continuation of that decline.
G06F dominates; AI-specific classes remain a minority
G06F (electric digital data processing) appears on 84.7% of all records, confirming that most claims sit inside core software-infrastructure mechanics. H04L (digital transmission, 23.2%) and G06N (AI models, 11.2%) trail well behind, and G16H, G06T and G06K each cover under 1.5% of records — thin enough to flag as adjacent, less-crowded territory.
Shares are the percentage of the 8,150 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 DevOps & Platform Engineering Patent Landscape covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-08-31. Counts reflect published records only and shift as new filings publish.
Go deeper on DevOps & Platform Engineering Patent Landscape with Eureka
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Try EurekaRepresentative Filing
A recent filing that shows where claims are heading
Representative Record · 2025-03-27
System and method for defense in depth of one or more software delivery pipelines (US20250103721A1)
GUARDIAN LIFE INSURANCE COMPANY OF AMERICA
A system and method for defense in depth, which employs a feedforward orchestrator, of at least one software delivery pipeline includes a security context and the feedforward orchestrator being configured to analyze the security context for each stage of the software delivery pipeline to mitigate security vulnerabilities. The system and method also implement security controls with at least one feedforward technique. Also, the feedforward orchestrator continuously employs feedback of the system to inform subsequent stages or subsequent layers of integration and deployment functions of the at least one software delivery pipeline.Filed by Guardian Life Insurance Company of America — notable because it comes from an enterprise buyer of DevOps tooling rather than a platform vendor, suggesting security-layered pipeline orchestration is being claimed outside the usual vendor set.
Most-cited records in this corpus
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | US6571282B1 | Block-based communication in a communication services patterns environment | 2,353 |
| 2 | US6289382B1 | System, method and article of manufacture for a globally addressable interface in a communication services pa… | 1,527 |
| 3 | US20030058277A1 | A view configurer in a presentation services patterns enviroment | 1,472 |
| 4 | US6332163B1 | Method for providing communication services over a computer network system | 1,392 |
| 5 | US6578068B1 | Load balancer in environment services patterns | 1,139 |
| 6 | US6601234B1 | Attribute dictionary in a business logic services environment | 1,126 |
| 7 | US6438594B1 | Delivering service to a client via a locally addressable interface | 1,095 |
| 8 | US6615253B1 | Efficient server side data retrieval for execution of client side applications | 1,089 |
| 9 | US20120185913A1 | System and method for a cloud computing abstraction layer with security zone facilities | 1,048 |
| 10 | US20130152047A1 | System for distributed software quality improvement | 963 |
Citation counts favour older records that have had more time to accumulate citations inside this searched corpus; treat them as a signal of historical influence, not of current claim strength.
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 DevOps & Platform Engineering Patent Landscape covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-08-31. Counts reflect published records only and shift as new filings publish.Run this in Eureka MCP
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What the filing pattern signals
Four read-outs from the trend, the concentration figures and the class mix that matter for where to file and who to watch.
Concentration
29.5% of 8,150
top 5 assignees' combined share
A defined core, then a long tail
The leader alone holds 1,532 records, and the top 5 combine for 29.5% of all records in scope while the top 10 reach 37.3%. That leaves well over 60% of filings spread across a long tail of single- and few-filing entrants — real competitive density, not a two-player market.
Ranking covers 100 assignees, the full set the data endpoint returns.
Momentum
1,138 → 982
peak to 2024, -14%
Past peak, not in decline
Filing volume peaked in 2021 at 1,138 records and eased to 982 by 2024, a 14% pull-back over that span — read as consolidation around proven architecture claims rather than as the field losing interest, especially since 2025-2026 data is still incomplete.
2024 is the last year treated as complete for trend purposes.
Technology mix
84.7% G06F
share of records
Core infrastructure claims dominate
G06F covers the large majority of records; H04L (23.2%) and G06N (11.2%) are present but secondary. Claims specific to AI-assisted delivery pipelines are still a minority position inside a G06F-heavy field, which is where freedom-to-operate work should concentrate first.
Shares sum above 100% because records carry multiple IPC classes.
Jurisdiction
5,571 US filings
of the receiving-office totals given
US-centred, with PCT and EPO as secondary routes
The United States receives the largest share of filings by a wide margin, with WIPO (PCT), the EPO, India and China each in the low hundreds. A filing strategy built only around the US receiving office would miss meaningful activity already routed through PCT and EPO.
Australia, India and China each show three-figure filing counts.
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Looking for what nobody has claimed yet?
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to devops & platform engineering patent landscape, with the prior art for and against each one.
Source: Patsnap Eureka. Co-assignee relationships and derived observations. Derived from a Patsnap search on DevOps & Platform Engineering Patent Landscape covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-08-31. Counts reflect published records only and shift as new filings publish.Run this in Eureka MCP
Who Is Filing
The competitive set
A mix of storage, cloud-platform, enterprise-software and financial-services filers make up the ranked leaders, with momentum data showing even the most active names cooling from prior-year peaks.
Leader
1,532 records
single-assignee total
One name well ahead of the field
The top-ranked assignee's 1,532 records is more than double the fifth-place total of 156, marking a large gap between the leader and everyone behind it rather than a tight cluster at the top.
Fifth place: 156 · Tenth place: 107.
Momentum
-85% to -94% YoY
latest-year change, several leaders
Broad pull-back among active filers
Recent-year momentum figures show multiple leading assignees filing far fewer records in the latest year than the year before, with year-over-year drops in the 50-94% range across several major names — consistent with the 2025-2026 publication lag rather than a sudden exit from the space.
Figures reflect latest available year, subject to publication lag.
Collaboration
6 co-assignee pairs
identified in scope
Co-filing is rare and mostly internal
Only six co-assignee pairs appear in this corpus, and the strongest links are between a parent company and its own regional subsidiary rather than between unrelated firms — cross-company joint filing is not yet a visible pattern here.
Strongest pair recorded 10 shared records.
Recent-year filing momentum by assignee
| Assignee | Recent year | YoY |
|---|---|---|
| Pure Storage, Inc. | 22 | -85% |
| Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC | 1 | -88% |
| SolarWinds | 1 | -94% |
| SAP SE | 1 | -50% |
| Capital One Services, LLC | 1 | -86% |
| Cisco Technology, Inc. | 1 | -92% |
| International Business Machines Corporation | 0 | -100% |
| Red Hat, Inc. | 0 | -100% |
Source: Patsnap Eureka. Assignee-level momentum. Derived from a Patsnap search on DevOps & Platform Engineering Patent Landscape covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-08-31. Counts reflect published records only and shift as new filings publish.Run this in Eureka MCP
Next Steps
Where to take this next
The figures here describe the shape of the field; deciding where to file, cite or challenge needs claim-level reading against your own roadmap.
Map your own claims against the G06F cluster
With 84.7% of records carrying a G06F class, a freedom-to-operate check should start there rather than in adjacent classes, then expand outward to H04L and G06N where relevant.
Explore the technology in Eureka →Watch the leader-to-tail gap for acquisition signal
A leader at 1,532 records against a long tail of small filers is a pattern worth monitoring for consolidation, especially where momentum has slowed in the latest year.
Track assignee activity in Eureka →Test claim strength in the under-claimed branches
G16H, G06T and G06K each cover under 1.5% of records — thin enough that a well-drafted first claim there faces less prior art than in the core cluster.
Run a white space search in Eureka →Source: Patsnap Eureka. Forward-looking reading of the same dataset. Derived from a Patsnap search on DevOps & Platform Engineering Patent Landscape covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-08-31. 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 clearly with 1,532 records in this dataset, more than double the fifth-place total of 156. Behind that leader sits a long tail of over 90 other ranked assignees plus many unranked filers, so the field is concentrated at the very top but still competitively open below it. The top 5 combined hold 29.5% of all 8,150 records in scope, and the top 10 hold 37.3%, meaning most filings sit outside even that group.
Filing volume grew steadily through the late 2010s, peaked in 2021 at 1,138 records, and had eased to 982 by 2024 — a 14% decline over that three-year span. That is best read as a cool-down from a filing peak rather than a collapse, particularly because publication lags actual filing by roughly 18 months, so the 2025-2026 figures in any dataset will always look lower than they eventually turn out to be. Judge momentum on complete years like 2024, not on the most recent partial year.
G06F, the electric digital data processing class, appears on 84.7% of all records in this corpus, making it by far the dominant classification. H04L (digital information transmission) follows at 23.2% and G06N (AI-based computing) at 11.2%, both well behind. Because a single record can carry several IPC classes, these percentages add up to more than 100%, and they should be read against the full 8,150-record total, not against each other.
The classes with the lowest filing density relative to the corpus are G16H (healthcare informatics, 1.3% of records), G06T (image data processing, 1.1%) and G06K (data recognition, 0.9%). These thin classes suggest delivery-pipeline claims specific to healthcare workflows, image-heavy observability tooling, or recognition-gated deployment decisions are still lightly claimed compared with the core G06F infrastructure cluster. That does not mean these areas are unclaimed entirely, only that filing density is materially lower there.
Rarely. This corpus contains only six identified co-assignee pairs, and the strongest of them links a parent company to its own regional subsidiary rather than two independent companies. That points to DevOps and platform engineering patenting being driven mostly by single-company R&D programmes rather than joint ventures or cross-licensing partnerships, at least within the records captured here.
The United States receives by far the largest volume, with 5,571 filings in this dataset. WIPO's PCT route (609) and the European Patent Office (553) are the next largest channels, followed by India (421), China (405) and Australia (100). A filing or clearance strategy focused only on the US would miss meaningful volume already routed through PCT and EPO.
Answers are grounded in the same dataset. Derived from a Patsnap search on DevOps & Platform Engineering Patent Landscape covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-08-31. Counts reflect published records only and shift as new filings publish.Run this in Eureka MCP
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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.