Memory Encryption Patents: Who Leads, Where the Gaps Are 2026
Memory Encryption and Integrity Patents: Filing Trends and Leading Claim Holders
Concentration at the top. The five leading assignees together hold 267 of 512 records in scope (52.1%), and the leading ten hold 341 (66.6%) — this is a field with a narrow set of dominant claim holders rather than a wide field of equal filers. Filings rose from 21 in 2017 to a peak of 60 in 2020, then eased. Across the last fully-formed span, 2021 (38) to 2024 (25), volume fell 34%. Treat 2025 and 2026 counts as incomplete rather than as evidence of further decline — publication typically lags filing by around 18 months.
- 1INTEL CORP117
- 2TELEFONAKTIEBOLAGET LM ERICSSON (PUBL)75
- 3TAHOE RES LTD28
- 4CISCO TECHNOLOGY INC26
- 5ACCERTIFY INC21
See the full memory encryption and integrity 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 memory encryption and integrity patents
Who are the leading patent holders in memory encryption and integrity?
One assignee holds a clear lead with 117 of the 512 records in this scope, well ahead of the fifth-ranked filer at 21 and the tenth at 11. The five leading assignees together account for 52.1% of all records and the ten leading assignees for 66.6%, meaning the field is concentrated rather than fragmented. Processor architecture companies and major telecom-equipment and chipset vendors make up most of this leading group, reflecting how tightly memory integrity mechanisms are tied to hardware platform design.
Is patent filing in memory encryption and integrity growing or slowing?
Filing peaked at 60 records in 2020 and has cooled since; across 2021 to 2024, the last span with reasonably complete data, filings fell from 38 to 25, a 34% decline. That is a genuine deceleration among the incumbents rather than a sign the topic is closed, since publication lags actual filing by around 18 months and the 2025-2026 counts will still rise as more records publish. Readers should treat any apparent drop in the very latest year with caution for that reason.
What does an integrity tree patent actually protect against?
An integrity tree is a hierarchical structure of cryptographic values, typically MACs or hashes, built over protected memory to detect tampering and replay attacks — someone substituting old, previously valid encrypted data back into memory. The representative record in this scope, filed by Intel, describes a variant that periodically re-keys the MAC and rebuilds the tree under a new key, bounding how long any single key is exposed. Claims in this space generally centre on how the tree is structured, how counters are managed, and how re-keying or key rotation is triggered.
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 Memory Encryption and Integrity 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.