Network Slicing Reliability Patents: Leaders, Trends & Gaps 2026
- Filing peaked in 2023 at five records and has not been matched since, suggesting the core resilience claim space filled early rather than accelerating with 5G-Advanced rollout.
- Every named large assignee shows zero filings in the latest year, including a -100% YoY drop for one major holder — a sign the field has gone quiet at the top rather than remaining contested.
- Ninety-four percent of the corpus sits in only two IPC subclasses, H04L and H04W, leaving fault-tolerance claims concentrated in transmission and wireless architecture rather than spread across adjacent domains.
What this landscape covers
This review tracks patent families that combine network slicing architecture with explicit resilience language — slice fault tolerance, SLA assurance, high-availability slicing — filed under the wireless and network-management IPC classes. The corpus is small: seventeen published records across roughly a decade of filing activity, which makes this a niche within the broader slicing literature rather than a mature sub-field in its own right. Reading it as an emerging claim space, not a saturated one, is the right frame.
Filing offices skew heavily toward the United States, with a smaller but meaningful share routed through the WIPO PCT system, and single filings in Europe and India. That distribution points to applicants treating slice-resilience claims as a US-anchored asset first, with international filing used selectively rather than as a matter of course.
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Filing trend and technology composition
Two views of the same seventeen-family corpus: how filing has moved year over year, and where the claims sit across IPC subclasses.
Flat-to-declining filing after a 2023 peak
Filing was at zero as recently as 2017, rose unevenly through the decade, and peaked at five records in 2023. The 2022 midpoint of two families shows the growth was not steady — it arrived late and has since receded, with the most recent year showing no filings. Given the roughly 18-month publication lag, the very last data point will always look thinner than filing activity actually was, but the multi-year plateau before it is a real signal, not an artefact.
Two subclasses carry the field
H04L (digital information transmission) and H04W (wireless communication networks) account for twelve and eleven records respectively out of seventeen total, with heavy overlap between the two. A single record each in D21F and G06N looks like classification noise or a tangential AI-assisted-management claim rather than a genuine second front.
Shares are the percentage of the 17 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
Go deeper on Network Slicing Reliability and Durability with Eureka
This page is one run against one query. Ask Eureka your own question about network slicing reliability and durability and every answer comes back with the patent numbers behind it.
Try EurekaThe most-cited records
Method and apparatus for network slicing management by network slice subnet management function
Discloses a method and apparatus for network slice subnet management function (NSSMF) operations toward South Bound blocks: providing slicing-related information to establish an interface between the NSSMF and SB blocks, then performing slice management procedures through that established interface.Filed by Samsung Electronics, published 2024-10-10 — illustrates how assurance claims are being framed around management-function interfaces rather than radio-layer mechanics.
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | US20220124560A1 | Resilient radio resource provisioning for network slicing | 114 |
| 2 | US20240305533A1 | Radio resource planning and slice-aware scheduling for intelligent radio access network slicing | 66 |
| 3 | WO2023283102A1 | Radio resource planning and slice-aware scheduling for intelligent radio access network slicing | 34 |
| 4 | US20220353745A1 | Network slicing with multiple slice instance variation types | 5 |
| 5 | US12342223B2 | Resilient radio resource provisioning for network slicing | 4 |
| 6 | US20250310183A1 | End-to-end IMS network slicing | 2 |
| 7 | US20250168703A1 | Network slicing capacity planning based on throughput variation and latency variation | 2 |
| 8 | US11553378B2 | Network slicing with multiple slice instance variation types | 2 |
| 9 | US20260156535A1 | Resilient radio resource provisioning for network slicing | 1 |
Citation counts reflect influence within the searched corpus and skew toward older filings; they are not a measure of current commercial weight.
Publication numbers are shown where the record carries one (9 of 9 rows); clicking a row searches Eureka by that number.
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Browse MCP servers →What the numbers say about this field
Three readings of the dataset that matter more than the raw counts: how concentrated citation influence is, how thin recent activity has become, and how narrow the claim space stays.
Influence sits with two early filings
The most-cited record, on resilient radio resource provisioning for network slicing, draws 114 citations — more than double the next entry. A related pair of filings on slice-aware scheduling for intelligent RAN slicing together account for a large share of remaining citation weight, meaning the field's foundational thinking traces back to a small number of applicants.
The largest holders have stopped filing
Every assignee tracked for recent-year momentum — including one with a -100% year-on-year drop — shows zero filings in the latest period. That is unusual for a technology tied to live 5G-Advanced and 6G-adjacent standards work, and suggests either consolidation of existing claims or a shift of filing activity outside this specific search scope.
Claims cluster in two subclasses
H04L and H04W between them cover the near-entirety of the corpus, with only isolated single-record excursions into unrelated classes. That concentration means the resilience-specific claim space is narrow by design of the search, not because the underlying engineering problem is narrow.
Co-filing is rare
Only two co-assignee pairings appear across all seventeen families, and the strongest pairing involves individual named inventors rather than two corporate entities. This is a field of largely solo corporate filers, not joint-venture or consortium patenting.
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to network slicing reliability and durability, with the prior art for and against each one.
Who holds the claims — and where the gate sits
A short list of large telecom equipment and handset vendors carries the named assignee positions, but none of them shows filing activity in the latest tracked year. That combination — recognisable holders, flat recent momentum — is the clearest signal in this dataset.
No active filer in the most recent period
Samsung, Huawei, Intel and Verizon's patent licensing arm all appear among the named assignees, and all show zero filings in the latest tracked year. Intel's position also carries a -100% year-on-year change, the only explicit rate figure in the recent-momentum data.
Individual inventors, not joint ventures
The strongest co-assignee pairing in the corpus links two named individuals rather than two companies; a second, weaker pairing links Huawei to a named individual inventor. There is no evidence here of formal cross-company alliance filing on slice resilience specifically.
Influence is concentrated, not distributed
The citation leaderboard is dominated by a small number of records tied to radio resource provisioning and slice-aware scheduling, rather than spread evenly across the seventeen-family corpus. New entrants citing this prior art are effectively building on work from a narrow set of foundational filings.
| Assignee | Recent year | YoY |
|---|---|---|
| Verizon Patent and Licensing Inc. | 0 | — |
| Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. | 0 | — |
| Intel Corporation | 0 | -100% |
| Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd. | 0 | — |
| YEH SHU PING | 0 | — |
| BAI JINGWEN | 0 | — |
| Qualcomm Incorporated | 0 | — |
| POE WINT YI | 0 | — |
Where to take this analysis
The filing plateau and the concentrated citation base both point to the same next step: check whether a candidate claim actually clears the small set of foundational filings before assuming the space is open.
Map a candidate claim against the top-cited records
Before drafting, run the specific mechanism — rollback, fallback interface, cross-domain arbitration — against the small set of highly cited radio-resource and scheduling patents identified here.
Explore in EurekaTrack whether filing resumes outside this search scope
Zero recent-year filings among named large assignees may reflect a scope boundary rather than an actual stop; broadening the IPC or keyword net could surface continued activity under different classification.
Run a broader search in EurekaCommon questions on this landscape
In this landscape, it means a filing that combines network slicing architecture — 5G network slicing or RAN slicing specifically — with explicit resilience or assurance language such as slice fault tolerance, SLA assurance, or high-availability slicing, classified under IPC codes covering wireless networks and network management. It excludes general slicing patents that do not address failure handling, SLA enforcement, or availability guarantees. That narrower definition is why this corpus totals only seventeen families rather than the much larger body of slicing patents overall.
The data shows a peak of five records in 2023 followed by no filings in the latest tracked year across every named assignee, including a documented -100% year-on-year drop for one major holder. Part of that drop-off is the roughly 18-month lag between filing and publication, which always understates the most recent year. But the multi-year plateau leading into that peak, rather than a sudden acceleration, suggests the core resilience claim space filled early and applicants have not returned to it at the same pace since.
Samsung, Huawei, Intel, and Verizon's patent licensing entity all appear among the named assignees in this dataset, alongside individually named inventors involved in the corpus's only two co-assignee pairings. Citation weight, however, concentrates in a small number of specific records on resilient radio resource provisioning and slice-aware scheduling rather than being spread evenly across these companies' broader portfolios. A company's overall patent size in slicing generally does not translate directly into dominance of this specific reliability niche.
Yes — the corpus concentrates almost entirely in two IPC subclasses, H04L and H04W, with only single-record excursions into adjacent areas like AI-based network management. Branches such as cross-domain SLA arbitration between RAN and core slices, slice-level rollback verification, and multi-tenant isolation under partial failure show little direct claim density in this dataset. That does not guarantee freedom to operate — a broader search may find relevant art outside this specific query scope — but it does mark where this particular corpus is thin.
Citation counts here favour older filings simply because they have had more time to be cited within the searched corpus, so a high count signals historical influence rather than current commercial importance. The top-cited record in this dataset, on resilient radio resource provisioning, draws 114 citations against a next-highest of 66 — a meaningful gap, but one that should be read alongside filing date, not instead of it. For assessing what is actively contested today, recent-year filing momentum is a better signal than citation count alone.
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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.