Fiber Laser Optical Waveguide Patents: Who Leads, Where the Gaps Are 2026
- Filings peaked in 2021 at 118 and have since declined, with 2022's 78 sitting near the midpoint of the whole trend — this is a maturing claim space, not a growing one.
- China receives more than double the filings of the United States, 657 versus 371, with Europe, WIPO and Japan trailing well behind.
- Momentum among named assignees is flat or negative across the board, several institutional filers show 0 or -100% year-on-year in the latest period, signalling a cooling rather than a consolidating field.
What this landscape covers
This landscape tracks patent families combining fiber laser or fibre laser terminology with core waveguide structures — gain fiber, double-clad fiber, photonic crystal fiber lasers and large-mode-area fiber — filed under IPC classes covering stimulated emission (H01S3/067, H01S3/16) and optical waveguide elements (G02B6/02). The scope is deliberately structural: it captures how the fiber itself is built and doped, not every downstream laser-system application.
Coverage runs from 2015 through the 2026 data cut-off, though filings from the most recent one to two years are undercounted because publication typically lags filing by around 18 months. The 1,409 families in the assignee ranking are the fairer unit for competitive reads, since they strip out duplicate filings across jurisdictions for the same invention.
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Filing trends and technology composition
The filing curve and the IPC spread together show a technology area that expanded through the late 2010s, crested in 2021, and has since pulled back — while remaining tightly concentrated in laser-specific classifications rather than diffusing into adjacent fields.
A single peak year, then decline
Filings rose from 51 in 2017 to a peak of 118 in 2021, then eased back toward 2022's 78 — roughly the midpoint of the observed range. The 2026 figure of 9 reflects the partial year and publication lag, not a collapse in activity, but the multi-year direction from peak to midpoint is a real signal that the most active filing window has passed.
Concentrated in H01S, with G02B as the only substantial adjacency
H01S (lasers and stimulated emission) covers 1,387 of 1,409 records — this dataset is almost entirely laser-classified by design. G02B (optical elements and systems) at 247 is the only meaningfully sized adjacency, pointing to waveguide and beam-delivery claims layered on top of the core laser structure. Everything below that — G02F modulation, B23K laser welding applications, C03C/C03B glass composition and manufacture — is a thin secondary layer, each under 5% of the corpus.
Shares are the percentage of the 1,409 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
Go deeper on Fiber Laser Optical Waveguide with Eureka
This page is one run against one query. Ask Eureka your own question about fiber laser optical waveguide and every answer comes back with the patent numbers behind it.
Try EurekaThe prior art shaping freedom to operate
Reflector, fiber cavity, and fiber laser (US10693273B2)
A reflector built from a gain fiber with a rare-earth-doped core and a periodic refraction structure: alternating high- and low-refractive-index regions spaced along the optical axis, each formed across the full cross-section of the doped core. The structure functions as an integrated wavelength-selective reflector inside the fiber itself rather than as a separate bulk-optic component.Filed by Toyota Chuo Kenkyusho; granted 2020-06-23.
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | US5566196A | Multiple core fiber laser and optical amplifier | 460 |
| 2 | US6324326B1 | Tapered fiber laser | 275 |
| 3 | US5513913A | Active multipoint fiber laser sensor | 242 |
| 4 | US5513194A | Stretched-pulse fiber laser | 236 |
| 5 | US6072811A | Integrated passively modelocked fiber lasers and method for constructing the same | 235 |
| 6 | US20040213302A1 | Pulsed laser sources | 232 |
| 7 | US8941912B2 | Ytterbium-doped optical fiber, fiber laser and fiber amplifier | 222 |
| 8 | US5564832A | Birefringent active fiber laser sensor | 176 |
| 9 | US5121460A | High-power mode-selective optical fiber laser | 168 |
| 10 | US6275512B1 | Mode-locked multimode fiber laser pulse source | 165 |
Citation counts favor older filings simply by virtue of being searchable longer; treat this table as a map of influential prior art, not of current commercial relevance.
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Browse MCP servers →What the numbers mean for filing strategy
Three patterns stand out once the raw counts are set against each other: where the filing office concentration sits, how thin the co-filing network is, and how the technology classification stays narrow even as filing volume has moved through a full cycle.
China is the primary filing venue, by a wide margin
China's receiving-office count of 657 is nearly double the United States' 371, with Europe (153), WIPO (115) and Japan (22) well behind. A freedom-to-operate review that only checks US and EP registers is checking the smaller half of this landscape.
The busiest filing window has already closed
Filings climbed from 51 in 2017 to a peak of 118 in 2021, then dropped to 78 in 2022 — near the trend's midpoint. That downward move from the peak, not the low partial-year 2026 count, is the meaningful signal: new entrants are filing into a space that has already been substantially staked out.
Co-filing is rare and concentrated in a handful of pairs
Only ten co-assignee pairs appear across the whole corpus, with the strongest pairings each recurring four times. This is a landscape built mostly on solo filings rather than joint ventures or dense research consortia, which limits how much can be learned about competitive alliances from co-filing alone.
Claims stay inside laser classification rather than diffusing outward
Ninety-eight percent of records sit in H01S. The only adjacency with real weight is G02B at 247 records; everything else — modulation, welding applications, glass composition and manufacture, sensing — is a thin secondary layer under 5% each. That narrowness is itself informative for anyone hoping to file around the core art via an adjacent classification.
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to fiber laser optical waveguide, with the prior art for and against each one.
Who holds the claim space, and where it is thinning
Momentum among the named assignees in the most recent filing year is flat or negative across the board — a pattern consistent with a technology area past its filing peak rather than one still being actively staked out by its incumbents.
Even active recent filers are pulling back
Shenzhen University recorded just 1 filing in the latest year, down 67% year-on-year — the single most active recent filer in the momentum data is still contracting, not expanding.
Several established names show zero recent activity
Fujikura, IMRA America and nLIGHT (rendered here from their evidence-summary entries) each show zero filings in the latest tracked year, with nLIGHT down 100% year-on-year. This does not mean these firms have exited fiber laser R&D, but their patenting cadence in this specific claim space has stopped.
Corning appears in two of the three strongest pairings
Corning shows up in two of the three strongest co-assignee pairs in the dataset, each with four shared filings — a modest but repeated collaboration pattern that stands out against an otherwise low co-filing baseline of ten pairs total.
| Assignee | Recent year | YoY |
|---|---|---|
| Shenzhen University | 1 | -67% |
| Fujikura Ltd. | 0 | — |
| IMRA America, Inc. | 0 | — |
| National University of Defense Technology, PLA | 0 | -100% |
| South China University of Technology | 0 | -100% |
| nLIGHT, Inc. | 0 | -100% |
| OFS Fitel, LLC | 0 | — |
| Corning Incorporated | 0 | — |
Where to take this analysis
The trend and ranking data answer who has filed and how much; the next questions are about specific claim boundaries and where a new filing could actually land clear of prior art.
Check claim scope against the most-cited prior art
The five most-cited records in this corpus, several dating to the mid-1990s, still shape what counts as novel in core fiber, tapering and mode-locking structures. Any new filing in those areas should be checked against them specifically, not just against recent publications.
Explore prior art in EurekaMap the under-claimed branches to your own R&D roadmap
The thin secondary IPC classes — glass composition, welding applications, modulation — are where claim density is lowest relative to the core H01S concentration. That is where a well-drafted first claim has the most room to stand.
Run a white space search in EurekaTrack momentum, not just historical volume
Several assignees with meaningful historical filing counts show zero or negative momentum in the latest tracked year. Confirm current activity before assuming a competitor is still actively building this portfolio.
Monitor assignee activity in EurekaCommon questions about fiber laser waveguide patents
This landscape identifies 1,409 patent families filed between 2015 and the 2026 data cut-off, searched against terminology for fiber and fibre lasers combined with structural terms like gain fiber, double-clad fiber and large-mode-area fiber. Filings peaked in 2021 at 118 and have declined since, with the most recent one to two years undercounted because patent publication typically lags filing by around 18 months. The great majority of these records, 1,387 of 1,409, sit in the H01S laser and stimulated-emission classification.
China is the leading receiving office with 657 filings, more than double the United States' 371. Europe (EPO) follows with 153, WIPO's PCT route with 115, and Japan with 22. A competitive or freedom-to-operate review limited to US and European registers would be missing the larger share of filing activity in this space.
Filing volume peaked in 2021 and has since fallen toward the trend's midpoint level, and recent-year momentum among named assignees is flat or negative across the board — several show zero filings or year-on-year declines of 67% to 100%. That pattern points to a technology area where the core claim space has already been substantially staked out, rather than one still in an active land-grab phase. New filers are more likely to succeed by targeting specific under-claimed sub-areas than by contesting the dense core.
US10693273B2, assigned to Toyota Chuo Kenkyusho, claims a reflector built into the gain fiber itself: a rare-earth-doped core combined with a periodic refraction structure of alternating high- and low-index regions spaced along the optical axis. It functions as an in-fiber wavelength-selective reflector rather than a separate bulk-optic component. Anyone designing an integrated in-fiber reflector with a similarly doped core and periodic index structure should review this claim scope closely, though designs using bulk-optic reflectors or different index-modulation approaches sit outside its specific claim language.
The ranking in this dataset spans institutional and corporate filers across China, Japan and the United States, but the more informative signal is momentum rather than raw historical count: most named assignees, including several with substantial filing histories, show zero or negative filings in the most recent tracked year. Co-filing is also rare across the dataset, with only ten co-assignee pairs identified and the strongest recurring just four times, suggesting most activity here is solo-filed rather than run through joint ventures or consortia.
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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.