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Run your analysis now →https://www.patsnap.com/resources/blog/rd-blog/fiber-laser-quality-control-patent-landscape/ · Patsnap · data cut-off 2026-07-31 · downloaded from the live page
Patent Landscape · Photonics & OpticsFiber Laser Quality Control Patents: Filing Trends and Leading Assignees
- Filing has cooled since its 2021 peak. 16 families published that year against 13 in 2017, with the count falling to a single family by 2022 — this is a maturing, not an expanding, claim space.
- Laser and optics IPCs dominate, welding is secondary. H01S (44 records) and G02B (23) carry the bulk of the filing, while B23K (17) shows how much of this control technology is claimed through a materials-processing lens rather than a pure-metrology one.
- Citation weight sits on fiber design, not on measurement. The most-cited records in this corpus describe large-core and large-mode-area fiber, not beam-quality or power-stability instrumentation — the highest-influence prior art predates the quality-control claims it now gets cited against.
74
Published Records
73%
Top-5 Share of All Records
-100%
3-Yr Growth (lag-adjusted)
US
Leading Jurisdiction
Published byPatsnap Research··7 min readSourced from Patsnap Eureka
Overview
What this landscape covers
This review tracks patent families that combine fiber or fibre laser subject matter with beam quality measurement, power stability testing or output quality control claims. The search spans title, abstract and claims text across 74 published families filed between 2015 and mid-2026, with the most recent year necessarily undercounted because publication typically lags filing by around eighteen months.
The dataset sits at the intersection of laser physics and process control: most families are classified under H01S (lasers and stimulated emission) or G02B (optical elements and systems), with a meaningful secondary cluster in B23K covering laser welding and material processing where output quality directly affects weld integrity.
Filing activity and technology composition, 2015–2026
Source: Patsnap Eureka. Assignee ranking and totals. Derived from a Patsnap search on Fiber Laser Quality Control 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
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The Data
Filing trend and technology mix
Publication counts and IPC classification for the 74 families in this corpus, filed between 2015 and the 2026 cut-off.
Filing activity has passed its peak
Filings ran at 13 in 2017, climbed to a peak of 16 in 2021, then dropped sharply — just one family published in 2022, and the curve trails toward zero by 2026. Given the typical 18-month publication lag, the last two years understate true filing activity, but the shape of the decline from 2021 is too steep to be an artifact of that lag alone.
Laser physics and optics carry the claim volume
H01S (44 records) and G02B (23) together account for the majority of filings, confirming that quality control here is claimed primarily as a laser-source and optical-path property. B23K (17) marks where the same control problem is claimed from the welding-process side, and the smaller G02F, G01J, G01M and H04N counts show measurement and imaging treated as supporting claims rather than the primary invention.
Shares are the percentage of the 74 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 Fiber Laser Quality Control covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-07-31. Counts reflect published records only and shift as new filings publish.
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Most-cited prior art in this corpus
Representative Filing
Dual output semiconductor optical amplifier-based tunable fiber laser
RESEARCH FOUNDATION OF THE CITY UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK
A dual output semiconductor optical amplifier-based tunable fiber laser is provided that can be switched from low to high power and vice versa. The laser system uses bidirectional semiconductor optical amplifier (SOA) for amplification and hence is able to introduce a unique feature of adjustable dual/single output ports.Filed by Research Foundation of the City University of New York, published 2018-08-30 as US20180248334A1.
Highest-citation records
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | US8159742B2 | Glass large-core optical fibers | 250 |
| 2 | US20100157418A1 | Glass large-core optical fibers | 72 |
| 3 | WO2009042347A1 | Glass large-core optical fibers | 64 |
| 4 | US20090097507A1 | Wavelength and Intensity Stabilized Laser Diode and Application of Same to Pumping Solid-State Lasers | 61 |
| 5 | US20100195194A1 | Large Mode Area Optical Fiber | 44 |
| 6 | US7239777B1 | Method and apparatus to coherently combine high-power beams in self-imaging waveguides | 39 |
| 7 | CN105784334A | 基于光电探测器和CCD相机的光纤激光光束质量测量方法 | 29 |
| 8 | US20150292941A1 | Modal decomposition of a laser beam | 26 |
| 9 | US7606273B2 | Wavelength and intensity stabilized laser diode and application of same to pumping solid-state lasers | 26 |
| 10 | WO2014064636A2 | Modal decomposition of a laser beam | 25 |
Citation counts reflect influence within the searched corpus and skew toward older, foundational filings — they are not a measure of current commercial relevance.
Patent titles are shown in the language they were filed in, not translated, so that each record stays verifiable against the original filing — a translated title will not match in Eureka or in any national register. 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 Fiber Laser Quality Control 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
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What the numbers indicate
Three patterns stand out once filing counts, IPC composition and citation weight are read together.
Filing Trajectory
16 → 1
peak 2021 to 2022 count
The wave has crested
Filing rose from 13 families in 2017 to a peak of 16 in 2021, then collapsed to a single family the following year and has not recovered. That is a sharper drop than publication lag alone explains, suggesting the core claim space around fiber laser quality control has been largely staked out.
Based on 74 published families, 2015–2026
Classification Split
44 vs 17
H01S records vs B23K records
Two different filing motivations
Laser-source claims (H01S, 44 records) outnumber welding-process claims (B23K, 17) by more than two to one. Anyone filing new quality-control claims tied to a welding application is working in a thinner, more open part of the map than anyone filing on the laser source itself.
IPC subclass counts, full corpus
Citation Weight
250 citations
on US8159742B2
Influence sits upstream of quality control
The most-cited records in this corpus describe glass large-core optical fiber and large-mode-area fiber design, not beam-quality or power-stability measurement. Quality-control claims here are built on top of fiber-design prior art rather than generating the highest citation counts themselves.
Top five cited records in corpus
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Co-filing is sparse
| Assignee | Co-assignee | Shared families |
|---|---|---|
| IMRA America | MCKAY HUGH | 1 |
| IMRA America | MARCINKEVICIUS ANDRIUS | 1 |
| IMRA America | LI JUN | 1 |
| IMRA America | FU LIBIN | 1 |
| IMRA America | DONG LIANG | 1 |
| Corning Incorporated | ZENTENO LUIS A | 1 |
| Corning Incorporated | WANG JI | 1 |
| Corning Incorporated | LIU ANPING | 1 |
Only 10 co-assignee pairs appear across the corpus, and the strongest links involve a single assignee filing jointly with individual named inventors rather than another company — this is a field of largely independent filers, not dense joint development.
Source: Patsnap Eureka. Co-assignee relationships and derived observations. Derived from a Patsnap search on Fiber Laser Quality Control 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 holds the claim space
Recent-year momentum is flat across every tracked assignee, consistent with the corpus-wide filing decline: none of the leading names show new publications in the latest tracked year, which matches the 18-month publication lag as much as it reflects reduced activity.
Momentum Check
0
latest-year filings, leading assignees
No assignee is currently active in the newest data
Every one of the assignees with the most historical filings shows zero publications in the most recent tracked year. That is expected given publication lag, but it also means the ranking table reflects positions built up over 2015–2021 rather than a live filing race.
Recent-year momentum, top assignees
Filing Pattern
10 pairs
co-assignee relationships
Filers work largely alone
With only ten co-assignee pairs across 74 families, most patents here are filed by a single organisation without an external co-applicant. Named individual inventors appear alongside company assignees more often than a second corporate co-filer does.
Co-assignee pair count, full corpus
Geographic Spread
28 US filings
vs 14 at EPO, 8 via WIPO
US-centric filing with a real European and PCT presence
Receiving-office counts show the United States as the largest single venue, but Europe and the PCT route together account for a comparable share, and smaller but non-trivial filing appears in Israel, China and Germany.
Receiving office distribution, full corpus
Recent-year filing momentum by assignee
| Assignee | Recent year | YoY |
|---|---|---|
| IPG Photonics | 0 | — |
| Raytheon | 0 | — |
| IMRA America | 0 | — |
| Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) | 0 | — |
| Fujikura Ltd. | 0 | — |
| Corning Incorporated | 0 | — |
| National University of Defense Technology | 0 | — |
| Research Foundation of the City University of New York | 0 | — |
Source: Patsnap Eureka. Assignee-level momentum. Derived from a Patsnap search on Fiber Laser Quality Control 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 dataset points to a mature core and a thinner periphery. Two directions follow from that.
Map claims against the under-claimed branches
Real-time beam-quality feedback and in-process power-stability sensing show thinner IPC representation than the core laser-source claims. A freedom-to-operate check against the specific claim language in those branches, rather than the corpus as a whole, is the next useful step.
Explore white space in EurekaTrack whether filing has genuinely stopped or is just unpublished
The drop after 2021 is steep enough to be real, but the last two years are still inside the publication-lag window. Re-running this trend in twelve months will separate a genuine slowdown from a reporting gap.
Set up monitoring in EurekaSource: Patsnap Eureka. Forward-looking reading of the same dataset. Derived from a Patsnap search on Fiber Laser Quality Control 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
This dataset identifies 74 published patent families filed between 2015 and mid-2026 that combine fiber or fibre laser subject matter with beam-quality measurement, power-stability testing or output quality control claims. That count reflects a specific search string across title, abstract and claims, so a broader query on fiber lasers generally would return a much larger number. Because publication lags filing by roughly eighteen months, the true count for 2025 and 2026 is understated in any dataset pulled today.
The leading assignees by historical filing volume include IPG Photonics, Raytheon, IMRA America, the CSIR (South Africa), Fujikura, and Corning, based on the ranking of the 74 families in this corpus. None of these assignees show filings in the most recent tracked year, which is consistent with the broader slowdown in the dataset rather than any single company exiting the field. Anyone doing competitive tracking should treat the ranking as a picture of accumulated position through the 2021 peak, not a live leaderboard.
No — filing peaked at 16 families in 2021, up from 13 in 2017, and then fell sharply, with only one family published in 2022 and a continued decline toward the 2026 cut-off. Some of that drop-off in the most recent two years is expected publication lag rather than a genuine stop in filing. But the size of the fall from the 2021 peak is larger than lag alone would explain, pointing to a real cooling of new filing activity in this specific claim space.
H01S (lasers and stimulated emission) and G02B (optical elements and systems) account for the largest shares of the corpus, at 44 and 23 records respectively, showing that most inventions here are claimed as properties of the laser source or optical path. B23K (welding, soldering and brazing) is the next largest group at 17 records, reflecting how often output quality control is claimed from the materials-processing side rather than as pure measurement. Smaller counts in G02F, G01J, G01M and H04N show optical modulation, radiation measurement, testing equipment and imaging treated as supporting rather than primary claim territory.
The thinnest IPC representation relative to the core H01S/G02B claim space sits around real-time beam-quality feedback loops, in-process power-stability sensing built into welding heads, and quality monitoring for multi-fiber output combiners. These branches show up in the corpus but at much lower density than the core laser-source and optics claims, and B05D (coating processes) appears only once, suggesting coating-stage quality control is essentially unclaimed here. A first claim in any of these areas should be checked against the specific prior art in that sub-branch rather than against the corpus average, since density varies widely by branch.
Answers are grounded in the same dataset. Derived from a Patsnap search on Fiber Laser Quality Control 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
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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.