Lighting & LED Patents: Top Companies & Filing Trends 2026
- Concentration is modest at the top. the five largest filers together hold 11.3% of all 100,358 records in scope, and the leading ten hold 15.5% — a long tail of smaller filers accounts for the rest.
- Filing activity has cooled from its 2017 peak. output ran from 1,026 records that year down through a 2021-to-2024 span that fell 39%, from 833 to 509 filings, before the most recent, still-incomplete years.
- Optics and semiconductor classes lead, but adjacent fields intrude. G02B and H01L each cover about 3.5% of records, while diagnostic and data-processing classes (A61B, G06F) show lighting and optical-sensing claims reaching well outside conventional luminaire design.
Filing growth compares 2021 (833 records) with 2024 (509) — 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 100,358 records in scope (CR5), not by the ranked leaders only.
What this landscape covers
This dataset tracks published patent records at the intersection of solid-state lighting and the optical control components that drive it — waveguides, emitters, receivers, wavelength control and beam control — across 100,358 records filed or published between 2015 and the 2026 data cut-off. The search string deliberately pairs lighting-system terms with the optical-hardware terms that make a lighting claim technically enforceable, so the corpus captures both luminaire-level design and the underlying photonic components.
Because publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, the most recent one or two years in any trend line will always look thinner than they eventually turn out to be. Read the 2024 figures as the last complete year, and treat 2025 and 2026 as still filling in.
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Filing trend and technology composition
Two views of the same corpus: how filing volume has moved year over year, and how records distribute across the IPC subclasses that touch lighting and optical control.
A 2017 peak followed by a multi-year pullback
Annual filings peaked at 1,026 in 2017. The 2021-to-2024 window shows a 39% decline, from 833 records down to 509, which is the clearest complete-year signal in the dataset — later years are present but understated by publication lag.
Optics and semiconductor classes dominate, but not by a wide margin
G02B (optical elements and systems) and H01L (semiconductor devices) each sit at about 3.5% of the 100,358 records, with F21V (lighting device components) close behind at 2.7%. Notably, A61B (diagnosis and surgery) and H04B (transmission) each clear 1.5%, showing how much of this corpus is shared with sensing and communications applications rather than pure illumination.
Shares are the percentage of the 100,358 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
Go deeper on Lighting & LED Patent Landscape with Eureka
This page is one run against one query. Ask Eureka your own question about lighting & led patent landscape and every answer comes back with the patent numbers behind it.
Try EurekaA representative filing and the most-cited prior art
Regulation of Wavelength Shift and Perceived Color of Solid State Lighting with Intensity Variation
Exemplary embodiments of the invention provide a system, apparatus, and method of controlling an intensity and spectrum of light emitted from a solid state lighting system. The solid state lighting has a first emitted spectrum at full intensity and at a selected temperature, with a first electrical biasing for the solid state lighting producing a first wavelength shift, and a second electrical biasing for the solid state lighting producing a second, opposing wavelength shift. Exemplary embodiments provide for receiving information designating a selected intensity level or a selected temperature; and providing a combined first electrical biasing and second electrical biasing to the solid state lighting.Filed by E2E Systems LLC, published 2009-03-26 — this record predates most of the corpus and illustrates an early approach to compensating colour shift through dual electrical biasing rather than optical filtering.
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | US5743262A | Blood glucose monitoring system | 2,090 |
| 2 | US20130201316A1 | System and method for server based control | 1,726 |
| 3 | US7213940B1 | Lighting device and lighting method | 1,658 |
| 4 | US6270455B1 | Networked system for interactive communications and remote monitoring of drug delivery | 1,612 |
| 5 | US5638818A | Low noise optical probe | 1,466 |
| 6 | US5337744A | Low noise finger cot probe | 1,392 |
| 7 | US6088607A | Low noise optical probe | 1,356 |
| 8 | US6397091B2 | Manual and automatic probe calibration | 1,325 |
| 9 | US5452717A | Finger-cot probe | 1,195 |
| 10 | US10231634B2 | Surgical instruments with sensors for detecting tissue properties, and system using such instruments | 1,067 |
Citation counts are strongest for older records simply because they have had longer to accumulate citations inside this searched corpus — treat them as a measure of influence on later filings, not of current commercial relevance.
Each row carries its publication number; clicking a row searches Eureka by that number.
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Browse MCP servers →What the data means for filing strategy
Three read-outs from the concentration, trend and classification figures above, translated into what they imply for anyone deciding where to file next.
No single filer controls the field
With the five largest filers holding 11.3% of all records and the leading ten holding 15.5%, this is not a landscape dominated by one or two blocking portfolios. The remaining 84.5% of filings sit with entities outside the ranked leaders, which means freedom-to-operate analysis has to look well past the household names.
Volume has pulled back from its 2017 peak
Annual filings ran from 1,026 at the 2017 peak down through a 39% drop between 2021 and 2024. That is a real, complete-year decline, not an artefact of publication lag — though the 2025-2026 figures shown in the trend chart will still rise as later filings publish.
Optics and semiconductor claims run neck and neck
G02B (optical elements and systems) and H01L (semiconductor devices) each cover roughly 3.5% of the 100,358 records, essentially tied. F21V, the dedicated lighting-components class, trails both, suggesting a meaningful share of activity is being claimed as optical or semiconductor hardware rather than as luminaire design.
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to lighting & led patent landscape, with the prior art for and against each one.
Who is filing, and where the crowding is lighter
The ranked leaders span consumer electronics, AR/VR hardware and traditional lighting manufacturers, but the ranking's long tail is where most of the corpus actually sits.
A clear leader, then a steep drop
The leading assignee holds 2,867 records, well ahead of fifth place at 1,542 and tenth place at 754. The gap between first and fifth is wider than the gap from fifth to tenth, pointing to one dominant filer rather than a tight cluster at the very top.
Named-inventor pairs cluster around a small number of firms
Only ten co-assignee pairs appear in the dataset, and the strongest of them link a single lighting-focused assignee to two named inventors repeatedly. That is a narrow pattern of collaboration rather than a broad ecosystem of joint filing.
Momentum has slowed sharply across multiple leaders
Several ranked assignees show steep year-over-year declines in the latest tracked year, including drops of 75%, 83% and full stops at 0 filings. Given the 18-month publication lag, some of this is timing rather than a genuine pullback, but the direction is consistent across more than one leader.
| Assignee | Recent year | YoY |
|---|---|---|
| MAY Patent Ltd. | 10 | -29% |
| Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. (Korea) | 2 | -83% |
| Magic Leap, Inc. | 1 | -75% |
| Wolfspeed, Inc. | 0 | — |
| Meta Platforms Technologies, LLC | 0 | -100% |
| Koninklijke Philips N.V. | 0 | -100% |
| Cree Lighting Method LLC | 0 | — |
| Apple Inc. | 0 | -100% |
Where to take this analysis
The figures above establish the shape of the field. The next steps depend on whether the question is defensive (freedom to operate) or offensive (where to file next).
Run a freedom-to-operate check on a specific claim element
The concentration figures show no single filer blocks the whole field, but that does not clear any individual claim. A targeted search against the most-cited records and the ranked leaders' active families is the next step before committing engineering resources.
Explore claim-level search in EurekaTrack the under-claimed branches as they mature
Wavelength-shift compensation, AR/VR beam control and sensor-integrated lighting all show lighter filing density than the core optics classes. Monitoring these branches now, before filings catch up with publication lag, gives an earlier read on where competitors are heading.
Set up a monitoring workspace in EurekaCommon questions about the lighting and LED patent landscape
The ranked leaders in this dataset span consumer electronics firms, AR/VR hardware makers, and traditional lighting manufacturers, with the top-ranked assignee holding 2,867 records against 100,358 total records in scope. The gap between the leader and fifth place is wider than between fifth and tenth, indicating one dominant filer rather than a tight cluster of equals. Even so, the top five combined hold only 11.3% of all records, so the field is far from a duopoly and freedom-to-operate work needs to look beyond the named leaders.
No — filing volume peaked in 2017 at 1,026 records and has since pulled back, with a documented 39% decline between 2021 (833 records) and 2024 (509 records), the last year that can be treated as complete. Figures for 2025 and 2026 in any trend chart will look lower still, but that reflects the roughly 18-month lag between filing and publication rather than a further collapse in activity. Anyone using this data to time a filing decision should treat the most recent one to two years as provisional.
Optical elements and systems (G02B) and semiconductor devices (H01L) are the two largest classes, each covering about 3.5% of the 100,358 records, essentially tied with each other. Lighting device components specifically (F21V) sit lower at 2.7%, and classes tied to material analysis, diagnostics and data processing also appear at meaningful shares, showing that a sizeable portion of this corpus is claimed as optical or semiconductor hardware, or as sensing applications, rather than as pure luminaire design. Because a single record can carry several IPC classes, these shares add up to more than 100% of the record total, which is expected.
The lighter-claimed branches in this dataset sit at the intersection of lighting control and adjacent fields: wavelength-shift compensation through electrical biasing rather than optical filtering, beam control for AR/VR waveguide combiners, lighting systems integrated with material-analysis sensors, and optical receiver design for indoor positioning. These areas show up in the corpus but with less density than the core optics and semiconductor classes, meaning claim space there is more open. A first claim in any of these branches should be checked against the most-cited prior art before drafting, since several older records already cover foundational wavelength and intensity-control mechanisms.
US20090079357A1, filed by E2E Systems LLC and published in 2009, claims a system and method for controlling the intensity and spectrum of solid-state lighting using two opposing electrical biasing states to produce a controlled wavelength shift. It is a representative record in this corpus rather than the single most-cited one, but its priority date is early relative to the rest of the dataset, so it is worth checking against any new filing that proposes electrical-biasing-based colour or wavelength control. It does not block optical-filtering or mechanical approaches to the same problem, which remain a distinct design path.
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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.