Gate All Around Nanosheet Patents: Who Leads, Where the Gaps Are 2026
Gate-all-around nanosheet transistor patents: who holds the claim space and where it is still open
68.0% concentration at the top. The top 5 of the ranked assignees account for 1,789 of the 2,629 records in scope — a claim map dominated early by a small set of filers. Filings rose from 90 in 2017 to a peak of 421 in 2022, then eased to 346 by 2024 — a -10% move across the 2021-2024 span. 2025 and 2026 figures (down to 34 so far) are undercounts still catching up to the publication lag, not evidence of a slowdown.
- 1TAIWAN SEMICONDUCTOR MANUFACTURING CO LTD998
- 2INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS MACHINE CORPORATION314
- 3APPLIED MATERIALS INC186
- 4INTEL CORP166
- 5SEMICON ENERGY LAB CO LTD125
See the full gate all around nanosheet 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 about this landscape
Who holds the most gate-all-around nanosheet transistor patents?
One assignee leads the ranked list with 998 of the 2,629 records in scope, far ahead of the fifth-ranked filer at 125 and the tenth at 53. The top 5 assignees combined hold 68.0% of all records, and the top 10 combined hold 84.8%, meaning the field is concentrated among a handful of large semiconductor manufacturers and foundries rather than spread evenly. Smaller filers make up a long tail beyond that top 10, each contributing a modest number of families.
Are gate-all-around nanosheet transistor patent filings still growing?
Filings grew from 90 in 2017 to a peak of 421 in 2022, then eased to 346 by 2024 — a -10% change across that later three-year span, not a collapse. Figures for 2025 and 2026 look lower still, but that reflects the roughly 18-month lag between filing and publication rather than an actual drop in R&D activity. The fairest read is a plateau following a rapid build-out phase, with the true 2025-2026 picture not yet visible in published data.
What does US10679906B2 actually cover?
US10679906B2, assigned to International Business Machines Corporation and published 2020-06-09, claims a nanosheet transistor structure using a bilayer spacer next to a dummy gate: an inner spacer layer plus a sacrificial layer that can be trimmed to bring source/drain regions closer to the channel and later removed to leave an airgap spacer. The stated benefits are improved junction sharpness and reduced parasitic capacitance. Anyone designing an inner-spacer or airgap-spacer process for nanosheet devices should review this claim set specifically, since it targets exactly that fabrication step.
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 Gate All Around Nanosheet 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.