Lidar Point Cloud Processing Patents: Who Files, What They Claim
34.9% of all 2,741 records sit with just five assignees, so the ground segmentation and clustering claim space is already dense at the top before you even look at the long tail. Annual publications rose from 91 in 2017 to a peak of 532 in 2023. The 2021-to-2024 window shows a -16% change (359 to 300), which reads as a genuine pull-back rather than noise since both years are past the publication lag window; 2025 and 2026 figures will keep revising upward as later filings publish.
- 1GM CRUISE HOLDINGS LLC13.8%
- 2STRONG FORCE VCN PORTFOLIO 2019 LLC7.2%
- 3MOTIONAL AD LLC6.3%
- 4WAYMO LLC4.1%
- 5GM GLOBAL TECHNOLOGY OPERATIONS LLC3.4%
See the full lidar point cloud processing 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 lidar point cloud processing patents?
One assignee leads the ranked field with 377 records, noticeably ahead of the fifth-place holder at 94 and the tenth-place holder at 70. The top five assignees combined hold 956 of the 2,741 records in scope, 34.9% of the total, so the leading edge of this field is concentrated in a handful of autonomous-vehicle platform companies and their suppliers. Below the top ten, which together hold 49.3% of records, the field spreads into a long tail of assignees with far fewer filings each.
Is lidar point cloud processing patent filing still growing?
Filings rose steadily from 91 in 2017 to a peak of 532 in 2023. Looking at the most recent fully comparable years, filings fell from 359 in 2021 to 300 in 2024, a -16% change, which points to a genuine cooling rather than continued acceleration. Counts for 2025 and 2026 are still low in the data because publication typically lags filing by around 18 months, so those years will revise upward over time and should not be read as a further decline yet.
Which patent classes cover lidar point cloud processing?
The two largest IPC subclasses are G01S, covering radar, sonar and positioning, at 28.6% of the 2,741 records, and G06T, covering image data processing and generation, at 23.6%. G06V image and video recognition and B60W hybrid or joint vehicle control each cover more than a fifth of records, showing that point cloud processing claims are typically bundled with recognition and vehicle-control claims rather than filed as pure sensing patents. Because a single record can carry several IPC classes, these shares add up to more than 100% and should not be summed.
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 Lidar Point Cloud Processing 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.