Model Watermarking Patents: Who Leads, Where the Gaps Are 2026
Model Watermarking and Fingerprinting Patents: Who Is Filing and What's Still Open
Filing nearly sextupled from 2021 to 2024, rising from 1 to 6 records a year (+500%), with 2022 the peak year so far at 9 records. Filings sat near zero before 2020, rose sharply through the 2021-2024 window (+500%, from 1 to 6 records a year), and peaked in 2022 at 9 records. Later years are undercounted due to publication lag, not a genuine slowdown.
- 1HUAWEI TECH CO LTD6
- 2CONTINENTAL AUTOMOTIVE TECHNOLOGIES GMBH3
- 3NANYANG TECH UNIV2
- 4FANDWORK TECH NANJING CO LTD2
- 5NAT INST OF TECH PATNA2
See the full model watermarking and fingerprinting 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 on model watermarking and fingerprinting patents
How many patents cover model watermarking and fingerprinting with attack resistance?
This landscape scope identifies 31 published records that combine model watermarking, fingerprinting or ownership verification with an explicit attack-resistance element such as extraction attacks, fine-tuning removal or distillation survival. That is a deliberately narrow scope rather than a count of every watermarking-related filing, which excludes patents that only describe embedding a mark without testing whether it survives removal attempts. The count spans 2015 through the mid-2026 data cut-off, with the bulk of activity from 2020 onward.
Who are the leading patent filers in model watermarking?
The leading assignee in this dataset holds 6 of the 31 records, with the top 5 assignees combined accounting for 48.4% of all records in scope. Beyond the top 10, which together hold 74.2% of records, filing activity is spread thinly across single- and double-filing entrants including universities and specialist security vendors. This is a moderately concentrated field with room for new entrants rather than one dominated by a single incumbent.
Is patent filing in this space growing or slowing down?
Filing activity grew sharply between 2021 and 2024, rising from 1 to 6 records a year, a +500% increase, with an overall peak of 9 records in 2022. Filings recorded for 2025 and 2026 appear lower, but that reflects the roughly 18-month lag between filing and publication rather than a genuine slowdown. Treat the most recent one to two years of any trend chart in this field as a floor, not a final figure.
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 Model Watermarking and Fingerprinting 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.