LED Packaging Patents: Who Leads, Where the Gaps Are 2026
- Filing peaked in 2017 at 27 families and has since flattened rather than grown, with the 2022 midpoint at 15 — this is a maturing claim space, not an expanding one.
- China dominates the filing venue with 206 of the tracked records against 59 in the United States and 20 at the EPO, meaning freedom-to-operate work has to start with Chinese filings, not US ones.
- The most-cited prior art predates the dataset's core focus the top-cited records concern general LED lighting and curing applications from the mid-2000s, a sign that citation counts here reward age over current relevance.
What this dataset covers
This landscape tracks 334 patent families published between 2015 and 2026 that combine LED packaging, phosphor-converted LED, or LED encapsulation terminology with claims touching color rendering index, thermal resistance, lumen maintenance, quantum dot phosphor, or chip-scale package design, filed under IPC classes covering semiconductor devices, phosphor materials, and multi-chip LED assemblies. The search is deliberately narrow: it isolates the packaging and phosphor-conversion layer of LED technology rather than the broader lighting fixture or luminaire market.
Because publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, the 2025 and 2026 figures in any trend line understate real filing activity for those years. The composition data below should be read with that lag in mind, particularly when judging whether interest in a sub-branch is actually declining or simply not yet visible in the public record.
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Filing trend and technology composition
Two views of the same 334-family dataset: how filing activity has moved year over year, and how those families distribute across IPC subclasses.
A flat-to-declining filing curve since 2017
Filings peaked at 27 in 2017 and sat at 15 by the 2022 midpoint — a gradual cooling rather than a collapse, consistent with a technology area where the core packaging architectures are largely settled and remaining filings refine rather than reinvent.
Concentrated in H01L, with secondary branches in lighting and materials
H01L (semiconductor devices) accounts for 330 of the tracked records, effectively the entire dataset, with smaller but notable clusters in F21V and F21K (lighting device and light-source components, 22 and 15 records) and C09K (phosphor and other materials, 14 records). The presence of A61C (dentistry) and A61N (electrotherapy) records points to curing-lamp and phototherapy applications sharing packaging claims with general illumination.
Shares are the percentage of the 334 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
Go deeper on LED Packaging and Phosphor Technology with Eureka
This page is one run against one query. Ask Eureka your own question about led packaging and phosphor technology and every answer comes back with the patent numbers behind it.
Try EurekaRepresentative filing and most-cited records
US10563824B2 — Substrate for LED encapsulation and three-dimensional LED bulb assembly
Provided are a substrate used for an LED encapsulation, a three-dimensional LED encapsulation comprising the substrate, a bulb comprising the three-dimensional LED encapsulation and a manufacturing method therefor. The substrate is spiral lines in shape, at least one of the ends of the substrate is provided with an electrode lead wire, the electrode lead wire is connected with the substrate by a connective component and/or connective materials, the spiral lines of the substrate comprise gaps between each other, and a smooth curve and/or a plurality of polylines end to end is formed at least partly at the edge of the substrate.Filed by SIM Lighting Design Company Limited, granted 2020-02-18. The spiral-substrate geometry sits adjacent to, rather than directly inside, the flat chip-scale-package claims that dominate the rest of this dataset.
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | US20050231983A1 | Method and apparatus for using light emitting diodes | 247 |
| 2 | US7345320B2 | Light emitting apparatus | 165 |
| 3 | US20050158687A1 | Method and apparatus for using light emitting diodes for curing | 155 |
| 4 | WO2004011848A2 | Method and apparatus for using light emitting diodes for curing | 128 |
| 5 | US20160377237A1 | Spiral LED filament and light bulb using spiral LED filament | 88 |
| 6 | EP1579733A1 | Color temperature correction for phosphor converted leds | 84 |
| 7 | US20120037935A1 | Substrate Structure of LED (light emitting diode) Packaging and Method of the same | 80 |
| 8 | US20060114201A1 | Color temperature correction for phosphor converted leds | 80 |
| 9 | US20100254129A1 | Saturated yellow phosphor converted LED and blue converted red LED | 73 |
| 10 | US20100220472A1 | Method and apparatus for using light emitting diodes | 53 |
Citation counts inside a searched corpus favor older, broadly-worded filings; read them as a measure of historical influence on general LED lighting, not as a ranking of current technical importance in phosphor conversion or chip-scale packaging.
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Browse MCP servers →What the filing pattern tells you
Reading the trend, the venue split, and the citation profile together points to a technology whose core packaging architecture is settled, where remaining activity concentrates on manufacturing variants and adjacent applications.
Cooling, not growing
Filing activity peaked in 2017 and has trended down through the dataset's midpoint. That pattern is typical of a packaging architecture — chip-scale package, phosphor-conversion layer — that has largely stabilized, with new filings more likely to be refinements than foundational claims.
China is the primary filing venue
With 206 of 334 records filed in China against 59 in the United States and 20 at the EPO, any clearance or design-around analysis in this space has to prioritize Chinese-language prior art and Chinese assignees first, not treat it as a secondary jurisdiction.
Nearly the entire corpus sits in one subclass
The near-total concentration in H01L (semiconductor devices) confirms this is a packaging-and-device dataset rather than a materials-science one; the smaller C09K and F21V/F21K clusters mark where phosphor chemistry and fixture-level integration claims branch off.
Old, broad filings still anchor the field
The most-cited records in this corpus are general LED-lighting and curing-application filings from the mid-2000s, well outside the packaging-specific focus of most later filings. That gap is a citation-age artifact, not a signal that those older claims remain the most relevant art today.
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to led packaging and phosphor technology, with the prior art for and against each one.
Assignee concentration and where activity has stalled
Ownership of the 334 tracked families is split between a handful of corporate filers with multi-year programs and a long tail of single or few-filing entrants; recent-year momentum has cooled across the board.
Collaboration is rare, not structural
Only four co-assignee pairings appear in the corpus, the strongest being a repeated individual-inventor pairing rather than a corporate joint filing. Most families in this space are filed by a single assignee working alone, which limits how much can be inferred about formal cross-licensing or joint-development activity.
Even active filers have gone quiet recently
Several assignees with meaningful historical filing counts, including corporate names spanning semiconductor packaging, lighting design and LED component manufacturing, show zero filings in the latest tracked year. Combined with the overall flat trend, this suggests consolidation of claim positions rather than continued expansion.
Chinese assignees anchor current activity
The heavy skew toward Chinese receiving-office filings lines up with the assignee list, where semiconductor and LED-component manufacturers based in China account for a large share of recent activity, even as their year-over-year filing counts flatten.
| Assignee | Recent year | YoY |
|---|---|---|
| DAHM JONATHAN S | 0 | — |
| Jiangyin Changdian Advanced Packaging Co., Ltd. | 0 | — |
| Koninklijke Philips N.V. (Royal Philips) | 0 | — |
| SIM Lighting Design Company Limited | 0 | — |
| Everlight Electronics Co., Ltd. | 0 | — |
| Quanzhou Sanan Semiconductor Technology Co., Ltd. | 0 | — |
| LING PEICHING | 0 | — |
| Xiamen Duocai Optoelectronics Technology Co., Ltd. | 0 | — |
Where to take this analysis
The dataset points to specific follow-up work depending on whether the goal is clearance, licensing strategy, or identifying open claim territory.
Run a freedom-to-operate check weighted toward China
With 206 of 334 records filed in China, a clearance search that starts from US or EPO filings alone will miss the bulk of active claims in this space.
Explore in Patsnap Eureka →Separate phosphor chemistry claims from package geometry claims
The C09K materials cluster (14 records) and the H01L device cluster (330 records) represent different claim strategies; treating them as one search risks missing narrow, still-open phosphor-formulation claims.
Explore in Patsnap Eureka →Watch for renewed filing once the 2025-2026 lag clears
The flat trend through 2022 may understate a rebound already in progress but not yet published; revisit the trend line once later years mature.
Explore in Patsnap Eureka →Common questions about LED packaging and phosphor patents
In this dataset, LED packaging patents are classified primarily under IPC H01L, the semiconductor devices subclass, with the search further narrowed to filings that explicitly mention LED packaging, phosphor-converted LED, or LED encapsulation in the title or claims. This captures the physical assembly of the LED die, its phosphor coating, substrate, and thermal management structure, as distinct from the broader lighting fixture or luminaire that houses the finished package. Secondary classifications in F21V and F21K appear where packaging claims overlap with lighting-device components.
Of the 334 families tracked, 206 were filed in China compared with 59 in the United States and 20 at the EPO. This reflects where LED chip-scale packaging and phosphor-conversion manufacturing is concentrated, since companies typically file first or most heavily in the jurisdiction where they manufacture and where enforcement matters most to them. A freedom-to-operate review limited to US and European filings would miss the majority of the documented claim activity in this specific technology area.
No — filing activity peaked at 27 families in 2017 and had declined to 15 by the 2022 midpoint of this dataset, indicating a flat-to-declining trend rather than continued growth. That said, publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, so the most recent one to two years in any trend line will understate actual filing activity. The overall pattern still points to a technology area where core packaging architectures are largely settled rather than rapidly expanding.
US10563824B2 covers a spiral-shaped substrate for three-dimensional LED encapsulation, where the substrate's spiral lines include gaps and the edge forms a smooth curve or connected polylines, with an electrode lead wire attached at the substrate's end. Its claims are geometry-specific to this spiral, gapped substrate form rather than to flat or planar chip-scale packages, so it does not broadly block conventional flat CSP architectures. Anyone designing a non-planar or filament-style LED substrate should review its claims closely; anyone working strictly in flat package geometries faces less direct overlap.
The technology composition data shows only 14 records classified under C09K, the materials subclass covering phosphor formulations, against 330 under the semiconductor-device subclass H01L — a strong signal that phosphor chemistry itself, as opposed to package geometry, is comparatively under-claimed in this corpus. Sub-areas such as quantum dot phosphor thermal stability, phosphor particle size effects on lumen maintenance, and non-planar substrate geometries show thinner filing density than the core chip-scale-package claims. These are reasonable areas to prioritize for novelty searching before drafting new claims.
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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.