Network Slicing Patents: Who Leads, Where the Gaps Are 2026
- Filing activity has already peaked. 2022 was the high-water mark at 21 families; filings since have declined, not accelerated, even accounting for publication lag.
- Two IPC subclasses carry almost the whole field. H04W and H04L together dominate the 104-family set, while adjacent classes like G06N and G06Q each account for only a handful of records.
- The US is the primary filing venue by a wide margin. 55 of the tracked filings went through the USPTO, more than triple the next-largest office, EPO at 17.
What the network slicing patent set actually covers
This landscape tracks patent families whose claims sit specifically on slice orchestration, slice lifecycle management, end-to-end slicing and slice isolation within the H04W28, H04L41 and H04W48 classification space — not the broader universe of anything mentioning 5G. That narrower cut produces 104 patent families published between 2015 and mid-2026, a modest corpus that makes individual assignee moves easier to read than in a noisier search.
The composition skews heavily toward core wireless and network-transport classes, with only light overlap into AI-based computing (G06N) or business-process claims (G06Q). That concentration says less about technology maturity than about where applicants have chosen to stake claims: slice orchestration logic and RAN-level isolation mechanisms are claimed densely, while slicing's intersection with adjacent domains remains comparatively open.
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Filing trend and technology composition
Two views of the same 104-family dataset: how filing volume has moved year over year, and which classification subclasses carry the claim density.
Filings rose to a 2022 peak, then declined
Filings climbed from 9 in 2017 to a peak of 21 in 2022, then trended down through 2026. Because publication typically lags filing by around 18 months, the final one or two years will always look thinner than they eventually prove to be — but the 2022 midpoint being the high point, rather than an intermediate step, points to a field that front-loaded its core claims rather than one still accelerating.
H04W and H04L dominate; everything else is a footnote
H04W (wireless communication networks) and H04L (digital information transmission) appear in 83 and 73 of the 104 records respectively, meaning most families claim across both. Beyond that pair, coverage drops off sharply: G06F appears in 8 records, G06N in 3, and B66B, G01R, G06Q and H02J each register only 1–2 — signalling that slicing's overlap with AI-driven orchestration, business-rule automation and adjacent infrastructure domains is still lightly claimed.
Shares are the percentage of the 104 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
Go deeper on Network Slicing Network Slicing with Eureka
This page is one run against one query. Ask Eureka your own question about network slicing network slicing and every answer comes back with the patent numbers behind it.
Try EurekaThe filings setting the citation baseline
Dedicated wide area network slices
Infrastructure comprising a wide area network (WAN) is adapted as a transport network portion of a 5G network in which the WAN is sliced at the optical layer on a discrete wavelength basis to provide dedicated network capacity to customers such as service providers, application providers, and network operators. Optical layer slicing extends the slicing construct for a radio access network (RAN) portion of the 5G network through to the WAN to provide end-to-end 5G network slicing from user equipment (UE) accessing an air interface of the network to application servers that are instantiated in data centers in a network cloud portion of the 5G network.Filed as WO2023009267A1, published 2023-02-02.
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | US20170164349A1 | Method and system for performing network slicing in a radio access network | 311 |
| 2 | US20220141821A1 | Methods for the Enforcement of Network Slicing Policies in Virtualized Cellular Networks | 117 |
| 3 | US20230006889A1 | Flow-specific network slicing | 103 |
| 4 | US20190140904A1 | Network slicing method and system | 72 |
| 5 | US20180184415A1 | Method and system for performing network slicing in a radio access network | 55 |
| 6 | US20200015158A1 | Network slicing serving function | 54 |
| 7 | US20210306938A1 | Method and system of template-based dynamic network slicing | 29 |
| 8 | US20220116335A1 | End-to-end network slicing (ENS) from ran to core network for next generation (NG) communications | 28 |
| 9 | US20220150723A1 | Resource management method, resource management system and workload scheduling apparatus for network slicing | 27 |
| 10 | US20200383043A1 | Apparatus and method for network slicing and slice management to support multi-slice services | 26 |
Citation counts inside this corpus favour older filings that have had more time to accumulate references; treat them as a signal of influence on subsequent filers, not as a measure of current commercial weight.
Each row carries its publication number; clicking a row searches Eureka by that number.
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Browse MCP servers →What the numbers mean for a filing decision
Three patterns in the dataset that matter more than the raw counts on their own.
The core claim space filled early
Filing volume rose from 9 in 2017 to a peak of 21 in 2022 and has trended downward since. Combined with the fact that 2022, not a later year, is the midpoint peak, this looks like a field where foundational orchestration and isolation claims were staked early rather than one still building momentum.
The US is the venue that matters most
More than half of the tracked filings went through the USPTO, with EPO a distant second at 17 and India at 14. WIPO/PCT filings sit at 12, suggesting most applicants are pursuing US protection directly rather than routing broad international coverage through PCT first.
Influence concentrates in a small number of early filings
The most-cited record in the set draws 311 citations, nearly triple the second-placed filing at 117. Both lead records date to the earlier years of the corpus, consistent with citation counts favouring age over current relevance inside a fixed search window.
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to network slicing network slicing, with the prior art for and against each one.
Who is filing, and who has gone quiet
Recent-year momentum diverges sharply from historical filing volume: most of the assignees with the deepest portfolios show zero filings in the latest tracked year.
AT&T is the only assignee still filing in the most recent year
Among the tracked assignees, AT&T is the sole entrant showing any filing activity in the latest year, at 1 family. Ericsson, Huawei, General Electric and ZTE all show zero filings in that same window, despite appearing among the named assignees in this corpus.
DISH Wireless shows the sharpest drop-off
DISH Wireless registers 0 filings in the latest year against a -100% year-over-year change, the steepest pullback flagged in the momentum data. That contraction lines up with the broader post-2022 decline across the dataset rather than standing apart from it.
Co-filing is thin and concentrated around a few names
Only 10 co-assignee pairs appear across the 104-family set, and the strongest repeated pairings all involve the same individual inventor, Guim Bernat Francesc, paired with different co-inventors. That points to individual-inventor mobility across employers rather than sustained institutional joint filing.
| Assignee | Recent year | YoY |
|---|---|---|
| AT&T Intellectual Property I, L.P. | 1 | — |
| Telefonaktiebolaget LM Ericsson | 0 | — |
| Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd. | 0 | — |
| General Electric Company | 0 | — |
| ZTE Corporation | 0 | — |
| DISH WIRELESS LLC | 0 | -100% |
| Wipro Limited | 0 | — |
| GUIM BERNAT FRANCESC | 0 | — |
Where to take this next
The dataset points to specific follow-up questions rather than a single conclusion.
Check the under-claimed branches before drafting
The gap between core H04W/H04L density and light coverage in G06N, G06Q and H02J suggests claim room at those intersections, but it needs verifying against filings outside this narrow search string before relying on it.
Explore white space in EurekaWatch whether the post-2022 decline is real or a lag artefact
Publication lag means 2025-2026 figures will fill in over the next year; re-running this trend then will clarify whether the field is genuinely contracting or simply under-reported.
Track filing trends in EurekaLook past citation rank for active portfolios
The most-cited records are also the oldest; a freshness-weighted view of the same assignees would better show who is actively defending claim territory today.
Run assignee analysis in EurekaCommon questions about network slicing patents
This landscape is scoped to filings whose claims specifically address slice orchestration, slice lifecycle management, end-to-end slicing or slice isolation, classified under H04W28, H04L41 or H04W48. It excludes the much larger universe of 5G patents that merely mention network slicing in passing. That narrower scope is why the total is 104 families rather than the thousands you would find searching '5G patents' broadly.
The dataset tracks named assignees including AT&T, Ericsson, Huawei, General Electric, ZTE and DISH Wireless, but current filing activity is thin across nearly all of them. AT&T is the only one of these showing a filing in the most recent tracked year; the rest show zero recent activity despite appearing in the historical record. That divergence between historical presence and current momentum matters more than raw portfolio size when assessing who is actively shaping the space now.
No — filing volume peaked in 2022 at 21 families and has declined since, based on the 2017-2026 trend in this dataset. Some of the apparent drop in the final one to two years is a publication-lag artefact, since patent applications typically publish around 18 months after filing. But because 2022 sits at the midpoint of the tracked range rather than near the end, the overall pattern reads as flat-to-declining rather than simply lagged.
The clearest gaps sit at the edges of the core claim density: AI-driven slice orchestration (only 3 of 104 records touch G06N), slice-aware billing or business-process automation (1 record in G06Q), and power-aware slice allocation (1 record in H02J). Optical-layer extension of slicing into wide-area transport, as seen in the Microsoft WO2023009267A1 filing, is another branch with limited surrounding coverage. Each of these is under-claimed relative to the dense H04W/H04L core, though confirming true openness requires a claim-by-claim freedom-to-operate check rather than IPC counts alone.
The USPTO leads by a wide margin with 55 of the 104 tracked filings, more than three times the EPO's 17. India follows at 14 and WIPO/PCT filings sit at 12, with China at only 5 in this specific claim set. That US concentration suggests applicants in this narrow slice-orchestration and isolation space are prioritising direct US protection over broad PCT-first international strategies.
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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.