Time Sensitive Networking Patents: Leaders & Filing Trends 2026
Filing growth compares 2021 (774 records) with 2024 (267) — a three-year span. 2024 is the most recent year we treat as complete: publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, so 2025 onwards are still filling in and any growth rate that ends there would understate the field. Top-5 share is the combined record count of the five largest assignees divided by all 5,731 records in scope (CR5), not by the ranked leaders only.
What this landscape covers
Time Sensitive Networking (TSN) extends deterministic, low-latency timing guarantees over standard Ethernet and, increasingly, wireless links — a capability industrial automation, 5G infrastructure and automotive networking all depend on. This landscape covers 5,731 published records filed between 2015 and the 2026 data cut-off, drawn from a search across titles, abstracts and claims for time-sensitive networking terminology. Filing rose sharply through the late 2010s, peaked in 2021, and has since eased back — a pattern more consistent with the core scheduling and configuration claims being staked out early than with the technology losing relevance.
Patent families, rather than raw publication counts, give the fairer read on where real competitive activity sits, since a single invention can generate multiple continuations and jurisdictional filings that inflate document counts without reflecting new engineering. The pages that follow break the corpus down by assignee, technology class, filing year and receiving office to show where the field is dense and where it remains open.
Filing trends and technology composition
The dataset spans filings from 2015 through the 2026 cut-off, with the most recent one to two years understated because publication typically lags filing by roughly 18 months.
A sharp rise into 2021, then a pull-back
Filings rose from 174 in 2017 to a peak of 774 in 2021, then fell to 267 by 2024 — a -66% move over that three-year span. Because 2025 and later years are still filling in, this should be read as the core scheduling and configuration claims getting staked out early, not as the field cooling off.
Digital transmission and wireless classes dominate
H04L (digital information transmission) covers 53.1% of the 5,731 records in scope and H04W (wireless communication networks) covers 37.5%, confirming that most TSN patent activity is claimed as network configuration and wireless integration rather than as dedicated control-system or AI hardware, where G05B (3.1%) and G06N (3.5%) remain comparatively thin.
Shares are the percentage of the 5,731 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
Go deeper on Industrial IoT: Time Sensitive Networking Patent Landscape with Eureka
This page is one run against one query. Ask Eureka your own question about industrial iot: time sensitive networking patent landscape and every answer comes back with the patent numbers behind it.
Try EurekaThe claims shaping this field
Changing a time sensitive networking schedule implemented by a softswitch (US20200028791A1)
Example methods, apparatus, systems and articles of manufacture to change a time sensitive networking schedule implemented by a softswitch are disclosed. The apparatus deploys a second softswitch on a compute node based on a configuration specification associated with a first softswitch, configures the second softswitch to implement an updated schedule different from the one the first softswitch implements, and replaces the first softswitch with it.Filed by Intel Corporation, published 2020-01-23. This claim structure — swap-in replacement of a running softswitch to change schedule — is the mechanism most directly relevant to anyone building dynamic TSN reconfiguration today.
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | US20080168135A1 | Information Infrastructure Management Tools with Extractor, Secure Storage, Content Analysis and Classificati… | 878 |
| 2 | US20200259896A1 | Industrial Automation with 5G and Beyond | 754 |
| 3 | US20170214701A1 | Computer security based on artificial intelligence | 692 |
| 4 | US20070261112A1 | Network Security Device | 663 |
| 5 | US20120028609A1 | Secure financial transaction system using a registered mobile device | 653 |
| 6 | US20040003051A1 | Method, system, and computer program product for managing controlled residential or non-residential environme… | 562 |
| 7 | US7890612B2 | Method and apparatus for regulating data flow between a communications device and a network | 534 |
| 8 | US20040103147A1 | System for enabling collaboration and protecting sensitive data | 496 |
| 9 | US5629678A | Personal tracking and recovery system | 423 |
| 10 | US20050091111A1 | Network methods for interactive advertising and direct marketing | 394 |
Citation counts are drawn from a searched corpus and favour older publications; treat them as a measure of influence within this dataset, not as a ranking of current technical importance.
Each row carries its publication number; clicking a row searches Eureka by that number.
Put your own technology through the same analysis
Eureka on the web
When you want the answer in the next five minutes.
The agent works the prompt against patents and technical literature, citing every source.
Run your analysis now →MCP server & REST API
When it has to run inside your own pipeline.
Patent search, landscape analysis and assignee resolution as MCP tools. Drop them into any agent framework, or call REST directly.
Browse MCP servers →What the filing data signals for strategy
These are the patterns a claims strategist would pull out of the dataset before deciding where to file or where to watch.
Filing is concentrated but not locked up
The top 5 assignees hold 24.0% of all 5,731 records and the top 10 hold 34.8%, leaving the majority of the field spread across a long tail of the remaining ranked companies and unranked filers.
The land-grab phase has passed for now
Filings peaked in 2021 at 774 and fell to 267 by 2024, a 66% drop, indicating the core scheduling and configuration claims were staked out during the 2017-2021 run-up.
Network-layer claims dominate over hardware
H04L (digital transmission) and H04W (wireless networks) together dominate the classification mix, while control-systems (G05B) and AI-based (G06N) classes each sit under 4% of records.
Influence skews toward older infrastructure patents
The most-cited records in this corpus date back to the 2007-2008 period, reflecting how citation counts favour older filings rather than signalling which recent TSN techniques matter most today.
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to industrial iot: time sensitive networking patent landscape, with the prior art for and against each one.
| Assignee | Co-assignee | Shared families |
|---|---|---|
| Mitsubishi Electric Corporation | Mitsubishi Electric R&D Centre Europe | 37 |
| Nokia Technologies Oy | Nokia Solutions and Networks Oy | 7 |
| Nokia Technologies Oy | NOKIA USA INC | 7 |
| Nokia Technologies Oy | Nokia Communications (Shanghai) Co., Ltd. | 6 |
| Telefonaktiebolaget LM Ericsson | ZHANG KEFENG | 4 |
| Qualcomm Incorporated | SPEICHER SEBASTIAN | 3 |
| Qualcomm Incorporated | LIU HUICHUN | 3 |
| Nokia Technologies Oy | Nokia USA Inc. | 3 |
Only 10 co-assignee pairs appear in the dataset, and the strongest is an internal pairing between a parent company and its European R&D subsidiary — a sign that most TSN patent work is filed by single entities rather than through cross-company collaboration.
Where to take this analysis next
The trends here point to specific follow-up work depending on whether the goal is freedom-to-operate, competitive tracking, or identifying open filing space.
Run a freedom-to-operate check on softswitch reconfiguration
If a design touches dynamic TSN schedule changes, check it against the softswitch-replacement claim structure in US20200028791A1 before filing or launching.
Check claims in EurekaTrack the ranked leaders' newest filings
With the top 10 assignees holding 34.8% of all records, monitoring their recent publications is the fastest way to see where scheduling and wireless-integration claims are heading next.
Set up assignee tracking in EurekaMap the control-systems and AI-scheduling white space
G05B and G06N classes remain thin relative to the H04L/H04W core — a deeper claim-chart comparison here can surface specific filing openings.
Explore white space in EurekaCommon questions about Time Sensitive Networking patents
Filing is concentrated among a small group of large telecom and industrial equipment companies, with the leader holding 519 records in a ranking of 100 companies. The top 5 assignees together account for 24.0% of all 5,731 records in scope, and the top 10 account for 34.8%, so a handful of filers control a meaningful share of the field while a long tail files in smaller numbers. This concentration reflects TSN's origin as a standards-driven extension of industrial Ethernet and 5G work, which naturally draws in large network-equipment vendors rather than niche startups.
Filings peaked in 2021 at 774 and had fallen to 267 by 2024, a decline of 66% over that span, so the sharpest growth phase has passed. That does not necessarily mean interest is fading — publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, so 2025 and 2026 figures in the raw trend are still incomplete and understate real filing activity. The more defensible reading is that the foundational scheduling and configuration claims were staked out during the 2017–2021 run-up, and later filers are now working within a denser prior-art landscape.
The bulk of filings sit in digital information transmission (H04L, 53.1% of the 5,731 records) and wireless communication networks (H04W, 37.5%), reflecting TSN's core job of guaranteeing deterministic timing over both wired and wireless links. Electric digital data processing (G06F, 14.8%) and multiplex communication (H04J, 9.3%) follow at meaningfully lower shares. Control and regulating systems (G05B) and AI-based computing (G06N) each sit under 4%, marking them as comparatively under-claimed relative to the networking core.
The clearest opportunities sit where TSN scheduling logic overlaps with industrial control systems and adaptive traffic management, since G05B (control and regulating systems, 3.1% of records) and G06N (AI-based computing, 3.5%) are both far thinner than the H04L and H04W core. A claim combining machine-learned traffic prediction with dynamic gate-control-list updates, framed around a control-system outcome, would sit outside the densest prior art. Business-process and device-orchestration angles on TSN (G06Q, 4.3%) are similarly under-filed relative to the core networking claims.
US20200028791A1, assigned to Intel and filed in January 2020, claims a specific mechanism for changing a live TSN schedule: deploying a second softswitch configured with the updated schedule on the same compute node, then replacing the first softswitch with it. This blocks designs that use a swap-in replacement software switch as the means of dynamic schedule change on virtualised network nodes. It does not reach static, pre-provisioned schedules or pure hardware-switch deployments that never instantiate a softswitch layer, which remain viable design-around routes.
Research Industrial IoT: Time Sensitive Networking Patent Landscape in depth with Eureka
Go past this page: query the whole industrial iot: time sensitive networking patent landscape corpus yourself, in your own scope.
Every answer comes back with patent numbers you can open.
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.