GaN HEMT Patents: Top Companies & Filing Trends 2026
GaN High Electron Mobility Transistor Patents: Who Leads and Where Filings Are Heading
Concentrated but not locked up. the top 5 assignees hold 25.0% of all 2,741 records in scope, and the top 10 hold 35.1% — leaving a long tail of single- and few-filing entrants. Filings peaked at 226 in 2017. By 2021 the field was filing at 138 per year, falling 17% to 115 in 2024 — the most recent year with complete publication data. Years after 2024 will revise upward as later-filed applications publish.
- 1KK TOSHIBA8.5%
- 2FUJITSU LTD7.5%
- 3NGK INSULATORS LTD3.9%
- 4HRL LAB2.7%
- 5TAIWAN SEMICONDUCTOR MANUFACTURING CO LTD2.4%
See the full gan high electron mobility transistors analysis in Eureka
- The complete ranking, not just the top five
- Every IPC branch with its share of the corpus
- The most-cited records, and where claim space is still thin
Common questions on GaN HEMT patents
Who holds the most GaN HEMT patents?
One assignee leads the ranked field with 233 records, well ahead of fifth place at 65 and tenth place at 46. The top 5 assignees together account for 25.0% of all 2,741 records in scope, and the top 10 for 35.1%. That leaves the majority of filings spread across a long tail of 90 other ranked companies plus unranked single-filers, so leadership is real but not a lockout of the field.
Is GaN HEMT patent filing activity growing or slowing down?
Filing peaked in 2017 at 226 records and has since settled lower, with 2021’s 138 filings falling 17% to 115 by 2024. 2024 is the most recent year with complete publication data; because publication typically lags filing by about 18 months, the lower counts shown for 2025 and 2026 do not yet reflect true filing volume and will likely revise upward. Read the recent plateau as a cooling from peak intensity rather than a field in decline.
What technical problems do GaN HEMT patents in this space actually address?
This dataset was built around claims addressing current collapse, dynamic on-resistance, normally-off operation, buffer trapping, p-gate structures and substrate coupling — the reliability and threshold-control issues that determine whether a GaN device survives real switching conditions. The representative record in this set, for example, covers a buffer-layer doping and irradiation method aimed at buffer trapping. Most of this claim activity sits in device-structure classes (H01L, H10D) rather than in materials or circuit-integration classes.
Disclaimer. This analysis is based on Patsnap Eureka data drawn from a limited snapshot of global patent records and is provided for general information and reference only. Patent data carries inherent limitations — recent filings are under-counted because of publication lag, counts may be on a record or family basis, classification and applicant-name data may contain errors or duplicates, and the underlying search query defines the scope shown — so the analysis may be incomplete or inaccurate and may not reflect the full technology landscape.
Nothing here is an exhaustive prior-art, novelty, freedom-to-operate or validity search, nor does it constitute legal, financial or professional advice, and it should not be relied upon as such. Verify independently and review with qualified patent and legal professionals before acting on it.
Method: Filing trend and technology composition. Derived from a Patsnap search on GaN High Electron Mobility Transistors covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-07-31. Counts reflect published records only and shift as new filings publish. Every share divides by all records in scope. Data: Patsnap Eureka. See the full landscape report.