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Run your analysis now →https://www.patsnap.com/resources/blog/rd-blog/photonic-integrated-circuit-photodetector-patent-landscape/ · Patsnap · data cut-off 2026-07-31 · downloaded from the live page
Patent Landscape · Photonics & OpticsPhotonic Integrated Circuit Photodetector Patents: Filing Trends and Who Holds the Claim Space
- Filing has flattened, not grown. activity peaked at 11 filings in 2017 and sat at 10 by the 2022 midpoint — this is a mature, occupied claim space rather than an emerging one.
- Optics dominates the IPC mix. G02B (optical elements & systems) touches 94 of 114 families, roughly triple the H01L semiconductor-device count, showing most claims are written around the optical path, not the detector material stack.
- The US is the primary filing gateway. 63 of the tracked receiving-office filings went through the United States, more than the EPO, UK, WIPO/PCT and China combined.
114
Published Records
50%
Top-5 Share of All Records
-80%
Filing Growth 2021→2024
US
Leading Jurisdiction
Filing growth compares 2021 (10 records) with 2024 (2) — 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 114 records in scope (CR5), not by the ranked leaders only.
Published byPatsnap Research··7 min readSourced from Patsnap Eureka
Overview
What this landscape covers
This dataset tracks patent families at the intersection of photonic integrated circuits (PICs) and integrated photodetection — germanium photodetectors, waveguide photodetectors, avalanche photodiodes, and integrated photodetector structures generally, filtered to IPC classes covering semiconductor photodetectors (H01L31/107, H01L31/0232) and optical waveguide coupling (G02B6/42). It spans filings from 2015 through the mid-2026 data cut-off, with 114 patent families identified across that window.
Publication typically lags filing by around 18 months, so the last one to two years in any trend chart will always look thinner than the filing activity that actually occurred — treat the most recent year as a floor, not a ceiling.
Filing activity, 2017–2026
Source: Patsnap Eureka. Assignee ranking and totals. Derived from a Patsnap search on Photonic Integrated Circuit Photodetector covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-07-31. Counts reflect published records only and shift as new filings publish.Run this in Eureka MCP
The data
Filing trend and technology composition
Two views of the same 114 families: when they were filed, and which parts of the IPC tree they sit in.
A peak in 2017, then a plateau
Filings hit their tracked high of 11 in 2017 and by 2022 — the midpoint of the window — activity had settled to 10, essentially flat over five years. That pattern reads as an established field with steady renewal filing rather than one still in a growth phase; a reader betting on rapid near-term expansion should weigh this against their own roadmap.
Optical path claims outnumber device claims
G02B (optical elements & systems) appears in 94 of 114 families, well ahead of H01L (semiconductor devices, 42), H04B (transmission, 23) and H01S (lasers, 20). The gap suggests that coupling, waveguide integration and optical routing are more heavily claimed than the photodetector material or junction design itself — a signal for where freedom-to-operate searches should concentrate first.
Shares are the percentage of the 114 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
Source: Patsnap Eureka. Filing trend and technology composition. Derived from a Patsnap search on Photonic Integrated Circuit Photodetector covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-07-31. Counts reflect published records only and shift as new filings publish.
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Most-cited records and a representative filing
Representative filing
WO2023249564A1 — A waveguide-integrated avalanche photodiode
NATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF SINGAPORE
Design and fabrication method for a novel silicon-waveguide-integrated avalanche photodiode (APD). An epitaxially grown APD device comprises an absorption layer of InGaAs and a multiplication layer of InAlAs or other III-V compounds. Light propagating along a silicon waveguide is evanescently absorbed by the absorption layer, which is bonded on a silicon layer and optically coupled to the waveguide. The device is reported to exhibit a high responsivity of substantially 0.99 A/W at substantially 1570 nm and a dark current of substantially 7.6 nA at the stated operating condition.Filed by National University of Singapore, published 2023-12-28.
Highest-cited records in this corpus
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | US5031188A | Inline diplex lightwave transceiver | 66 |
| 2 | US20220003948A1 | Integrated Silicon Photonics Transceivers Enabling Ultra-High-Speed High Dense Input/Output And Interconnect … | 50 |
| 3 | US20110249936A1 | TRANSMITTER PHOTONIC INTEGRATED CIRCUIT (TxPIC) CHIP | 48 |
| 4 | US20230376818A1 | High Density Fiber Optic Packaging for Cryogenic Applications | 44 |
| 5 | US5144637A | Inline diplex lightwave transceiver | 44 |
| 6 | US20140252411A1 | Low voltage avalanche photodiode with re-entrant mirror for silicon based photonic integrated circuits | 32 |
| 7 | WO2021026241A1 | Processing system for lidar measurements | 28 |
| 8 | US20200393618A1 | Metal contact free photodetector with sidewall doping | 27 |
| 9 | US9099581B2 | Re-entrant mirror photodetector with waveguide mode focusing | 21 |
| 10 | US20160202423A1 | Optical coupling device, photonic integrated circuit, and method of forming an optical coupling device | 19 |
Citation counts inside a searched corpus skew toward older filings simply because they have had more time to accumulate citations — read this as a signal of historical influence, not of which technology is currently most active.
Each row carries its publication number; clicking a row searches Eureka by that number.
Source: Patsnap Eureka. Citation counts and representative records. Derived from a Patsnap search on Photonic Integrated Circuit Photodetector covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-07-31. Counts reflect published records only and shift as new filings publish.Run this in Eureka MCP
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Reading the numbers
What the filing pattern, citation spread and receiving-office mix actually indicate for someone deciding where to file or where to look for design-around room.
Filing pace
11 → 10 → 0
2017, 2022, 2026 (partial)
Plateau, not a curve
The tracked peak is 2017's 11 filings; the 2022 midpoint of 10 shows no meaningful growth over the following five years. Combined with the publication lag, this looks like a field where incumbents renew and defend existing positions more than they expand into new claim territory.
Filing trend, 2017–2026
IPC spread
94 vs 42
G02B vs H01L record counts
Optics claims outweigh device claims
G02B appears in more than twice as many families as H01L. Anyone drafting new photodetector-material claims is competing in a comparatively less crowded slice of the IPC tree than anyone drafting waveguide-coupling or packaging claims.
IPC subclass distribution
Jurisdiction mix
63 US
of the tracked receiving-office filings
US-centred filing gateway
United States filings outnumber EPO (23), UK (8), WIPO/PCT (7) and China (4) combined. A freedom-to-operate check that skips US prosecution history is checking a small fraction of the relevant record.
Receiving office distribution
Citation spread
66 max citations
US5031188A, oldest top-cited record
Influence sits with older transceiver filings
The most-cited records in this corpus are largely early transceiver and TxPIC chip filings rather than recent detector-material work, which is the expected effect of citation lag rather than evidence that transceiver architecture is still where the active claiming is happening.
Most-cited records
Eureka AI Agent
Looking for what nobody has claimed yet?
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to photonic integrated circuit photodetector, with the prior art for and against each one.
Source: Patsnap Eureka. Co-assignee relationships and derived observations. Derived from a Patsnap search on Photonic Integrated Circuit Photodetector covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-07-31. Counts reflect published records only and shift as new filings publish.Run this in Eureka MCP
Players
Who holds the claim space
Assignee momentum in the most recent tracked year is flat across the named organisations below — none show new filings in the latest year, consistent with the plateaued overall trend. Co-assignee activity is thin: only 10 co-assignee pairs appear across the whole corpus, and the strongest pairing links a Belgian microelectronics research centre to a Korean electronics manufacturer.
Co-filing signal
5 co-filings
Interuniversity Microelectronics Centre (IMEC) + Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. (Korea)
Research-centre/manufacturer pairing leads collaboration
The strongest co-assignee pair in the dataset links a Belgian interuniversity microelectronics centre with a Korean electronics manufacturer, appearing together on five families — the densest collaboration signal in an otherwise sparsely co-filed field.
Co-assignee pairs, n=10
Academic-industry link
3 co-filings
Interuniversity Microelectronics Centre (IMEC) + Ghent University
University partnership as a second cluster
The same Belgian research centre also co-files with a Belgian university on three families, suggesting a regional academic-industry pipeline feeding early-stage waveguide photodetector work into later commercial filings.
Co-assignee pairs
Latest-year momentum
0 filings
across all six named assignees in the latest tracked year
No incumbent is currently accelerating
Every major assignee tracked for recent-year momentum shows zero filings in the latest year, which — even allowing for publication lag — is consistent with a field in maintenance mode rather than active expansion by any single leader.
Recent-year momentum by assignee
Recent-year filing momentum by assignee
| Assignee | Recent year | YoY |
|---|---|---|
| Infinera Corporation | 0 | — |
| Intel Corporation | 0 | — |
| Interuniversity Microelectronics Centre (IMEC) | 0 | — |
| Toshiba Corporation | 0 | — |
| Elenion Technologies, LLC | 0 | — |
| AT&T Corp. | 0 | — |
| GlobalFoundries U.S. Inc. | 0 | — |
| KANG YIMIN | 0 | — |
Source: Patsnap Eureka. Assignee-level momentum. Derived from a Patsnap search on Photonic Integrated Circuit Photodetector covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-07-31. Counts reflect published records only and shift as new filings publish.Run this in Eureka MCP
What's next
Next steps for R&D and IP teams
The plateaued filing trend and concentrated IPC composition point to specific next moves depending on whether the goal is freedom-to-operate, white-space filing, or competitive tracking.
Run a freedom-to-operate check on the optical path first
With G02B claims outnumbering H01L claims more than two to one, waveguide coupling and packaging are more likely to intersect existing claims than the photodetector material stack itself.
Explore FTO workflows in EurekaWatch for renewed filing after the publication lag clears
The apparent 2025–2026 drop-off is partly a reporting artefact; re-check the trend once filings from the last 18 months have published.
Set up filing alerts in EurekaProbe the under-claimed sub-areas before assuming saturation
Cryogenic packaging and multiplex-channel detector arrays show thinner density than the core waveguide-APD cluster and may still have room for a defensible first claim.
Map white space in EurekaSource: Patsnap Eureka. Forward-looking reading of the same dataset. Derived from a Patsnap search on Photonic Integrated Circuit Photodetector covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-07-31. Counts reflect published records only and shift as new filings publish.Run this in Eureka MCP
FAQ
Common questions
It is a photodetector — commonly a germanium photodetector or a waveguide-integrated avalanche photodiode — fabricated on or coupled into a photonic integrated circuit (PIC) so that light guided through an on-chip waveguide is absorbed and converted to an electrical signal within the same chip. These devices sit at the interface of silicon photonics and III-V or germanium optoelectronics, and are core components in optical transceivers and interconnects. The patent classifications tracked here (H01L31/107, H01L31/0232, G02B6/42) reflect exactly that overlap between semiconductor photodetector structure and optical waveguide coupling.
The dataset tracks recent-year momentum across several named organisations, including established semiconductor and telecom equipment firms and a Belgian interuniversity microelectronics research centre. None of the tracked assignees show new filings in the most recent tracked year, and the strongest collaboration signal is a research-centre-to-manufacturer co-filing pair rather than a single dominant filer. This points to a fragmented leadership picture rather than one or two companies controlling the space.
Based on this corpus, filing activity peaked at 11 in 2017 and had only reached 10 by the 2022 midpoint, indicating a plateau rather than growth. Because publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, the apparent decline into 2025 and 2026 is partly an artefact of that lag and should not be read as a sudden drop in R&D activity. The more reliable read is that this is a mature, steadily-maintained claim space rather than an emerging one.
IPC composition shows optical-path claims (G02B) at roughly twice the volume of semiconductor-device claims (H01L), and several adjacent sub-areas — cryogenic packaging, multiplex-channel detector arrays, and modulation-integrated detection — show comparatively thinner filing density than the core waveguide-photodetector and avalanche-photodiode cluster. Any first claim in these thinner areas should be checked against the existing dense cluster for overlap, since PIC photodetector claims frequently span both optical coupling and device structure in a single filing. A proper white-space assessment needs a full freedom-to-operate search, not just a density read from IPC counts.
United States filings account for 63 of the tracked receiving-office records, well ahead of the EPO (23), UK (8), WIPO/PCT (7) and China (4), so a US prosecution history and file-wrapper search is the natural starting point. That said, the EPO count is substantial enough that European filings should not be skipped, especially given the strong Belgian research-centre presence in the co-assignee data. A thorough search should still cover WIPO/PCT filings, since PCT applications often precede national-phase entry in multiple jurisdictions at once.
Answers are grounded in the same dataset. Derived from a Patsnap search on Photonic Integrated Circuit Photodetector covering 2015–2026, data cut-off 2026-07-31. Counts reflect published records only and shift as new filings publish.Run this in Eureka MCP
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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.