Identity Aware Proxy and Microsegmentation Patents: Who Holds the Ground
70.6% concentration. The top 5 assignees hold 60 of all 85 records in scope — a field where a small group of filers has already staked most of the claim space. Filings climbed from 0 in 2017 to a peak of 7 in 2019, dipped, then grew from 2 in 2021 to 5 in 2024 — a 150% increase over that three-year span. The United States leads receiving offices with 41 filings, followed by WIPO PCT filings at 11 and EPO and IL each at 8, indicating a filing strategy still centred on US priority with selective international extension.
- 1VMWARE INC25
- 2NICIRA INC15
- 3CISCO TECHNOLOGY INC12
- 4MCMASTER UNIV4
- 5NETMOTION WIRELESS4
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- 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 this landscape
Who are the leading patent holders in identity aware proxy and microsegmentation?
The ranking covers 28 assignees across 85 records, and it is heavily front-loaded: the leading assignee alone holds 25 records, compared with 4 at fifth place and 2 at tenth. Together the top 5 assignees account for 70.6% of all 85 records in scope, and the top 10 reach 87.1%. That means most of the architectural ground in this field has already been claimed by a small number of filers, and later entrants tend to compete on narrower implementation details rather than broad system claims.
Is patent filing in this space growing or slowing down?
Filings grew from 2 in 2021 to 5 in 2024, a 150% increase, after an earlier peak of 7 in 2019. The 2024 figure is the most recent year with essentially complete publication data. Filings recorded for 2025 and 2026 will look lower simply because publication typically lags the actual filing date by around 18 months, so they should not be read as evidence of a slowdown.
What technology areas do these patents cover most heavily?
H04L, the digital information transmission class, appears in 91.8% of the 85 records, making it by far the dominant technology base. G06F (general digital data processing) and H04W (wireless communication networks) each cover 35.3% of records, reflecting a split between platform-level and wireless-specific implementations. Switching and selecting (H04Q) and general transmission (H04B) are comparatively untouched, at 2.4% and 1.2% of records respectively.
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 Identity Aware Proxy and Microsegmentation 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.